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ENCHANTED INDIA 





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ENCHANTED 
INDIA 



BY 



PRINCE BOJIDAR KARAGEORGEVITCH 




HARPER & BROTHERS 

PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

1899 



*^* '■'■Enchanted India,''^ which was 
written in French by Prince Bojidar 
Karageorgevitch^ and translated by Clara 
Bell, is now published in advance of 
the edition in the original language. 



V0 33 b 



TO MY FRIEND 

M. H. SPIELMANN 



CONTENTS 



At Sea 










1, 305 


Bombay 








. 3, 91, 302 


Ellora 








. 36 


Nandgaun 










46 


Baroda 










. 50 


Ahmedabad 










. 55 


Palitana 










. 64 


Bhawnagar 










84 


Hyderabad 










92 


Trichinopoly 










107 


Madura 










114 


TUTICORIN 










123 


Colombo 










123 


Kandy 










125 


Madras 










133 


Calcutta 










139 


Darjeeling 










145 


BeNARES/-^ 

Allahabad 










154 
181 


LUCKNOW 










185 


Cawnpore 










189 



viii 

GWALIOR 


coi!^: 


CENTS 




PAGE 

. 199 


Agra 








. 204 


Jetpoor 








213 


Delhi . 








. 216, 299 


Amritsur 








. 233 


Lahore 








. 235 


Eawal Pindi 








. 238 


Peshawur 








. 241 


MURREE 








. 253 


Garhi . 








. 254 


Srinagar 








. 256 


Kampoor 








. 266 


DOMEL . 








. 269 


Derwal 








. 271 


KOHAT . 








273, 287 


BUNNOO 








. 274 


Dehra Doon 








. 289 


Hardwar 








. 296 



ENCHANTED 
INDIA 



AT SEA 

rpHE air is heavy with indefinable perfume. We 
-*- are already coasting the Indian shore, but it 
remains invisible, and gives no sign but by these 
gusts of warmer air laden with that inscrutable 
aroma of musk and pepper. A lighthouse to port, 
which we have for some time taken for a star, 
vanishes in the light mist that hangs over the 
coast, and then again there is nothing but the 
immensity of waters under the clear night, blue 
with moonlight. 

All the day long a quantity of medusse have 
surrounded the ship : white, as large as an ostrich's 
egg, with a pink or lilac heart, like a flower ; others 
of enormous size, of a paler blue than the sea, fringed 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

with intense and luminous green — a splash of light 
on the dusk of the deep. Others, again, white, 
blossoming with every shade of rose and violet. 
Then, towards evening, myriads of very small ones, 
thickening the water, give it a yellowish tinge, 
clinging to the ship's side, rolling in the furrow 
of its wake, a compact swarm, for hours constantly 
renewed ; but they have at last disappeared, leaving 
the sea clear, transparent, twinkling with large flecks 
of phosphorescence that rise slowly from the depths, 
flash on the surface, and die out at once under the 
light of the sky. 



Before daybreak, in the doubtful light of waning 
night, dim masses are visible — grey and purple 
mountains — mountains shaped like temples, of 
which two indeed seem to be crowned with low 
squat towers as if unfinished. 

The morning mist shrouds everything; the scene 
insensibly passes through a series of pale tints, to 
reappear ere long in the clear rosy light, which 
sheds a powdering of glowing gold on the broad 
roadstead of Bombay. 

But the enchantment of this rose-tinted land, 
vibrating in the sunshine, is evanescent. The city 



BOMBAY 

comes into view in huge white masses — docks, and 
factories with tall chimneys; and coco-palms, in 
long lines of monotonous growth, overshadow square 
houses devoid of style. 

As we go nearer, gothic towers are distinguishable 
among the buildings — faint reminiscences of Chester, 
clumsily revived under the burning light of white 
Asia. 



BOMBAY 

In the spacious harbour, where a whole fleet 
of steamships lies at anchor, a swarm of decked 
boats are moving about, sober in colour, with the 
bows raised very high in a long peak, and immense 
narrow sails crossed like a pair of scissors, and 
resembling a seagull's wings. 

The noise in the dock is maddening. The Customs, 

the police, the health-officers, all mob the voyager 

with undreamed-of formalities, such as a paper to 

be signed declaring that he has but one watch and 

one scarf-pin, and that their value is in proportion 

to the wearer's fortune. Then, again, the dispersal 

of the luggage, which must be fished out at another 

spot amid the yelling horde of coolies who rush at 

3 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the trunks and use the portmanteaus as missiles, till 
at last we are in the street. 

Under the blinding sunshine reflected from the 
whitewashed houses, an incredibly mixed crowd, 
squeezed against the railings of the custom-house 
wharf, stands staring at the new arrivals. Natives, 
naked but for a narrow loin-cloth rolled about their 
hips; Parsees in long white tunics, tight white 
trousers, and on their heads hideous low square 
caps of dark wax-cloth, pursuing the stranger with 
offers of money-changing; Hindoos, clad in thin 
bright silk, and rolls of light-hued muslin on their 
head; English soldiers, in white helmets, two of 
whom stare at me fixedly, and exclaim that, "By 
Jo', Eddy has missed this steamer!" 

There are closed carriages, victorias, vehicles with 
a red canopy drawn by oxen, the shafts set at 
an angle. The drivers bawl, shout to the porters, 
fight for the fare with their whips, while, overhead, 
kites and hawks wheel incessantly, uttering a 
plaintive cry. 

Along the roads of beaten earth, between tall 
plastered houses, a tramway runs. In the shop- 
fronts the motley display suggests a curiosity shop, 
and the goods have a look of antiquity under the 
thick layer of dust that lies on everything. It is 

4 



BOMBAY 

only in the heart of the city, in the "Fort," that 
the shops and houses have a European stamp. 

Opposite the hotel, beyond the tennis club, is 
a sort of no-man's-land, where carriages are housed 
under tents. Natives dust and wash and wipe 
down the carriages in the sun, which is already 
very hot; and the work done, and the carriages 
under cover, out come swarms of little darkies, 
like ants, who squall and run about among the 
tents till sunset. 

Further off, under the banyan trees, is the sepoys' 
camp; they have been turned out of barracks on 
account of the plague ; and flashing here and there 
among the dark, heavy verdure there lies the steely 
level of motionless ocean. 

In the English quarter of Bombay the houses are 
European : Government House, the post office, the 
municipal buildings — perfect palaces surrounded 
by gardens; and close by, straw sheds sheltering 
buffaloes, or tents squatted down on common land ; 
and beyond the paved walks are beaten earth and 
huge heaps of filth, over which hover the birds 
of prey and the crows. 

A large building of red and white stone, with 

spacious arcades and a central dome, as vast as a 

cathedral, stands at the angle of two avenues — the 

5 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

railway terminus; and a great market of iron and 
glass — Crawford Market. Here are mountains of 
fruit, greenery, and vegetables of every colour and 
every shade of lustre; and a flower garden divides 
the various market sheds, where little bronze coolies, 
in white, scarcely clad, sell oranges and limes. 

At the end of the garden are the bird sellers, 
their little cages packed full of parrots, minahs, 
and bulbuls; and tiny finches, scarcely larger than 
butterflies, hang on the boughs of ebony trees and 
daturas in bloom. 



In the native town the houses are lower and 
closer together, without gardens between. Down 
the narrow streets, between booths and shops, with 
here and there a white mosque where gay-coloured 
figures are worshipping, or polychrome temples 
where bonzes are drumming on deafening gongs, 
run tramways, teams of oxen, whose drivers shriek 
and shout, and hackney cabs, jingling and rattling. 
Among the vehicles there moves a compact crowd 
of every race and every colour: tall Afghans, in 
dingy white garments, leading Persian horses by the 
bridle for sale, and crying out the price ; bustling 

Parsees ; naked Somalis, their heads shaven and their 

6 



BOMBAY 

oiled black skins reeking of a sickening mixture 
of lotus and pepper; fakirs, with wild, unkempt 
hair, their faces and bodies bedaubed with saffron 
and the thread of the ''second birth" across their 
bare breast; Burmese, with yellow skins and long 
eyes, dressed in silks of the brightest pink; Mon- 
golians, in dark-hued satin tunics embroidered with 
showy colours and gold thread. 

There are women, too, in the throng of men, but 
fewer in number. Parsee ladies, draped in light 
sarees of pale-hued muslin bordered with black, 
which shroud them entirely, being drawn closely 
over the narrow skirt, crossed several times over 
the bosom, and thrown over the right shoulder to 
cover the head and fall lightly on the left shoulder. 
Hindoo women, scarcely clothed in red stuff, faded 
in places to a strong pink; a very skimpy bodice, the 
chol^ embroidered with silk and spangles, covers the 
bust, leaving the arms and bosom free; a piece of 
thin cotton stuff, drawn round the legs and twisted 
about the waist, covers the shoulders and head, like 
a shawl. On their wrists and ankles are silver 
bangles; they have rings on their fingers and toes, 
broad necklaces with pendants, earrings, and a sort 
of stud of gold or copper, with coloured stones, 
through the left nostril. They go barefoot, pliant 

7 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

forms avoiding the jostling of the crowd, and 
carrying on their head a pile of copper pots one 
above another, shining like gold, and scarcely held 
by one slender arm with its bangles glittering in 
the sun. The tinkle of the nanparas on their 
ankles keeps time with their swinging and infinitely 
graceful gait, and a scent of jasmine and sandal- 
wood is wafted from their light raiment. Moslem 
women, wrapped from head to foot in sacks of thick 
white calico, with a muslin blind over their eyes, 
toddle awkwardly one behind the other, generally 
two or three together. Native children beg, pur- 
suing the passenger under the very feet of the 
horses; their sharp voices louder than the hubbub 
of shouts, bells, and gongs, which exhausts and 
stultifies, and finally intoxicates the brain. 

Everything seems fused in a haze under the sun, 
as it grows hotter and hotter, and in that quivering 
atmosphere looks like a mass in which red and 
white predominate, with the persistent harmony of 
motion of the swaying, barefooted crowd. 

The air is redolent of musk, sandal- wood, jasmine, 
and the acrid smell of the hookahs smoked by placid 
old men sitting in the shadow of their doors. 

The ground here and there is stained with large 

pink patches of a disinfectant, smelling of chlorine, 

8 



BOMBAY 

strewn in front of the house where anyone lies 
dead. And this of itself is enough to recall to 
mind the spectre of the plague that is decimating 
Bombay ; in this excitement, this turmoil of colour 
and noise, we had forgotten it. 

Shops of the same trade are found in rows; 
carpenters joining their blocks, and workmen 
carving ornaments with very simple tools — clumsy 
tools — which they use with little, timid; persistent 
taps. Further on, coppersmiths are hammering 
the little pots which are to be seen in everybody's 
hands ; under the shade of an awning stretched 
over the tiny booth, the finished vessels, piled up 
to the roof, shed a glory over the half -naked toilers 
who bend over their anvils, perpetually making jars 
of a traditional pattern, used for ablutions. There 
are two men at work in each shop, three at most, 
and sometimes an old man who sits smoking with 
half-closed eyes. 

In a very quiet little alley, fragrant of sandal- 
wood, men may be seen in open stalls printing 
patterns with primitive wooden stamps, always the 
same, on very thin silk, which shrinks into a twisted 
cord reduced to nothing when it is stretched out to 
dry. 

Here are carvers of painted wooden toys — red 

9 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

and green dolls, wooden balls, nests of little boxes 
in varied and vivid colours. 

Far away, at the end of the bazaar, in a street 
where no one passes, are the shoemakers' booths 
littered with leather parings ; old cases or petro- 
leum tins serve as seats. Among the workmen 
swarm children in rags, pelting each other with 
slippers. 

And, quite unexpectedly, as we turned a corner 
beyond the coppersmiths' alley, we came on a row 
of tea-shops, displaying huge and burly china jars. 
Chinamen, in black or blue, sat at the shop doors 
in wide, stiff armchairs, their fine, plaited pigtail 
hanging over the back, while they awaited a 
customer with a good-humoured expression of dull 
indifference. 



After breakfast a party of jugglers appeared in 
front of the hotel ; they performed on a little 
carpet spread under the shade of a banyan tree. 
Acrobatic tricks first, human ladders, feats of 
strength ; then nutmegs were made to vanish and 
reappear; and finally they conjured away each other 
in turn, in little square hampers that they stabbed 
with knives to prove that there was nobody inside ; 

10 



BOMBAY 

and to divert the spectators' attention at critical 
moments they beat a tom-tom and played a shrill 
sort of bagpipe. 

The jugglers being gone, a boy, to gain alms, 
opened a round basket he was carrying, and up rose 
a serpent, its hood raised in anger, and hissing with 
its tongue out. 

After him came another little Hindoo, dragging 
a mongoose, very like a large weasel with a fox's 
tail. He took a snake out of a bag, and a battle 
began between the two brutes, each biting with all 
its might ; the sharp teeth of the mongoose tried to 
seize the snake's head, and the reptile curled round 
the mongoose's body to bite under the fur. At last 
the mongoose crushed the serpent's head with a 
fierce nip, and instantly a hawk flew down from 
a tree and snatched away the victim. 



By noon, under the torrid blaze which takes the 

colour out of everything, exhaustion overpowers 

the city. Vehicles are rare ; a few foot-passengers 

try to find a narrow line of shade close to the 

houses, and silence weighs on everything, broken 

only by the buzzing of flies, the strident croak 

of birds of prey. 

11 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Along Back Bay lies the Malabar Hill, a promon- 
tory where the fashionable world resides in bunga-_ 
lows built in the midst of gardens. Palm trees 
spread their crowns above the road, and on the 
rocks which overhang the path ferns of many 
kinds are grown by constant watering. The bun- 
galows, square bouses of only one storey, surrounded 
by wide verandahs, and covered in with a high, 
pointed roof, which allow^s the air to circulate above 
the ceilings, stand amid clumps of bougainvillea 
and flowering jasmine, and the columnar trunks 
of coco-palms, date trees, baobabs and areca palms, 
which refresh them with shade. 

The gardens are overgrown with exuberant tropi- 
cal vegetation : orchids, daturas hung with their 
scented purple bells, gardenias and creepers; and 
yet what the brother of a London friend, on whom 
I am calling, shows me with the greatest pride, are 
a few precious geraniums, two real violets, and 
a tiny patch of thickly-grown lawn of emerald hue. 



Colaba is the port; the docks, with tall houses 

between the enormous warehouses. The silence is 

appalling ; windows, doors — all are closed. Only a 

few coolies hurry by in the white sunshiae, with 

12 



BOMBAY 

handkerchiefs over their mouths to protect them 
against the infection in these streets, whence came 
the plague which stole at first through the suburbs, 
nearer and nearer to the heart of the city, driving 
the maddened populace before it. 

One morning a quantity of dead rats were found 
lying on the ground ; next some pigeons and fowls. 
Then a man died of a strange malady — an unknown 
disease, and then others, before it was known that 
they were even ill. A little fever, a little swelling 
under the arm, or in the throat, or on the groin — 
and in forty -eight hours the patient was dead. 
The mysterious disease spread and increased ; every 
day the victims were more and more numerous; 
an occult and treacherous evil, come none knew 
whence. At first it was attributed to some dates 
imported from Syria, to some corn brought from 
up-country ; the dates were destroyed, the corn 
thrown into the sea, but the scourge went on and 
increased, heralded by terror and woe. 



At Mazagoon, one of the suburbs of Bombay, 

behold a Parsee wedding. 

The bridegroom sits awaiting his guests, in his 

garden all decorated with arches and arbours, and 

13 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

starred with white lanterns. An orchestra is 
playing, hidden in a shrubbery. 

Presently all the company is assembled, robed 
in long white tunics. The bridegroom, likewise, 
dressed in white, has a chain of flowers round his 
neck; orchids, lilies, and jasmine, falling to his 
waist. In one hand he holds a bouquet of white 
flowers, in the other a coco-nut. A shawl, neatly 
folded, hangs over one arm. 

Over the gate and the door of the house light 
garlands, made of single flowers threaded like beads, 
swing in the breeze and scent the air. 

Servants carrying large trays offer the company 
certain strange little green parcels: a betel -leaf 
screwed into a cone and fastened with a clove, 
containing a mixture of spices and lime, to be 
chewed after dinner to digest the mass of food 
you may see spread out in the tables in the dining- 
room. 

Then follow more trays with tufts of jasmine 
stuck into the heart of a pink rose; and as the 
guest takes one of these bouquets the servant 
sprinkles first the flowers and then him with rose- 
water. 

Shortly before sunset the dastour arrives — the 

high priest — in white, with a white muslin turban 

14 



BOMBAY 

instead of the wax -cloth cap worn by other 
Parsees. 

The crimson sky seen above the tall coco-palms 
turns to pink, to pale, vaporous blue, to a warm 
grey that rapidly dies away, and almost suddenly 
it is night. 

Then an elder of the family deliberately lights 
the first fire — a lamp hanging in the vestibule ; 
and as soon as they see the flame the High Dastour 
and all those present bow in adoration with clasped 
hands. The bridegroom and the priest go into the 
house and have their hands and faces washed ; 
then, preceded by the band and followed by all the 
guests, they proceed to the home of the bride. 

There, again, they all sit down in the garden. 
The same little packets of betel, only wrapped in 
gold leaf, are offered to the company, and bunches 
of chrysanthemum sprinkled with scent. 

Then, two and two, carrying on their shoulders 

heavy trays piled with presents, women mount the 

steps of the house, the bridegroom standing at the 

bottom. The bride's mother comes forth to meet 

them in a dress of pale - coloured China crape 

covered with a fine white saree. She waves her 

closed hand three times over the gifts, and then, 

opening it, throws rice on the ground. This action 

15 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

she repeats with sugar and sweetmeats, and finally 
with a coco-nut. And each time she empties 
her hand a naked boy appears from heaven knows 
where, gathers up what she flings on the ground, 
and vanishes again, lost at once in the shadows 
of the garden. 

At last the bridegroom goes up the steps. The 
mother-in-law repeats the circular wave of welcome 
over the young man's head with rice and sugar 
and an egg and a coco-nut ; then she takes the 
garland, already somewhat faded, from his neck, 
and replaces it by another twined of gold thread 
and jasmine flowers, with roses at regular intervals. 
She also changes his bouquet, and receives the 
coco-nut her son-in-law has carried in his hand. 

In the midst of a large room crowded with 
women in light-hued sarees, the bridegroom takes 
his seat between two tables, on which are large 
trays of rice. Facing him is a chair, and one is 
occupied by the bride, who is brought in by a 
party of girls. She is scarcely fourteen, all in 
white ; on her head is a veil of invisibly fine muslin 
ten folds thick ; it enfolds her in innocence, and 
is crowned with sprays of myrtle blossom. 

The ceremony now begins. The dastour chants 

his prayers, throwing handfuls of rice all the time 

16 



BOMBAY 

over the young couple. A sheet is held up between 
the two, and a priest twines a thread about the chair. 
At the seventh turn the sheet is snatched away, and 
the bride and bridegroom, with a burst of laughter, 
fling a handful of rice at each other. 

All the guests press forward, ceasing their con- 
versation, which has sometimes drowned the voice 
of the dastour, to ask which of the two threw the 
rice first — a very important question it would seem. 

The two chairs are now placed side by side, and 
the priest goes on chanting his prayers to a slow 
measure, in a nasal voice that is soon lost again in 
the chatter of the bystanders. Eice is once more 
shed over the couple, and incense is burnt in a large 
bronze vessel, the perfume mingling with that of the 
jasmine wreaths on the walls. 

Then the procession, with music, makes its way 
back to the bridegroom's house. On the threshold 
the priest says one more short prayer over the bowed 
heads of the newly-married couple, and at last the 
whole party go into the room, where the guests take 
their places at the long tables. 

Under each plate, a large square cut out of a 
banana leaf serves as a finger-napkin. Innumerable 
are the dishes of sweetmeats made with ghee (clari- 
fied butter), the scented ices, the highly-coloured 
c 17 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

bonbons ; while the young couple walk round the 
rooms, and hang garlands of flowers about the necks 
of the feasters. 

Outside the night is moonless, deep blue. Venus 
seems quite close to us, shining with intense bright- 
ness, and the jasmines scent the air, softly lighted 
by the lanterns which burn out one by one. 



In the evening, at the railway terminus, there was 
a crush of coolies packed close up to the ticket-office 
of the third-class, and holding out their money. 
Never tired of trying to push to the front, they all 
shouted at once, raising their hands high in the air 
and holding in their finger-tips one or two shining 
silver rupees. Those who at last succeeded in get- 
ting tickets slipped out of the crowd, and sang 
and danced; others who had found it absolutely 
impossible to get anything retired into corners, and 
groaned aloud. 

In the middle of the station groups of women 

and children squatted on the flagstones, their little 

bundles about them of red and white rags, and 

copper pots looking like gold; a huddled heap of 

misery, in this enormous hall of palatial proportions, 

handsomely decorated with sculptured marble. 

18 



BOMBAY 

They were all flying from the plague, which was 
spreading, and emptying the bazaars and workshops. 
The Exchange being closed, trade was at a standstill, 
and the poor creatures who were spared by the 
pestilence were in danger of dying of hunger. 

When the gate to the platform was opened there 
was a stampede, a fearful rush to the train; then 
the cars, once filled, were immediately shut on the 
noisy glee of those who were going. 

At the last moment some porters, preceded by two 
sowars in uniform and holding pikes, bore a large 
palankin, hermetically closed, to the door of a first- 
class carriage, and softly set it down. The carriage 
was opened for a moment: I could see within a 
party of women-servants, shrouded in white muslin, 
who were preparing a couch. An old negress handed 
out to the porters a large sheet, which they held 
over the palankin, supporting it in such a way as 
to make a covered passage screening the carriage 
door. There was a little bustle under the sheet — 
the end was drawn in, and the sheet fell over the 
closed door. 

The last train gone, all round the station there 

was quite a camp of luckless natives lying on the 

ground, wrapped in white cotton, and sleeping under 

the stars, so as to be nearer to-morrow to the train 

19 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

which, perhaps, might carry them away from the 
plague-stricken city. 



In a long narrow bark, with a pointed white sail 
— a bunder-boat — we crossed the roads to Elephanta, 
the isle of sacred temples. Naked men, with no 
garment but the langouti, or loin-cloth, navigated 
the boat. They climbed to the top of the mast, 
clinging to the shrouds with their toes, if the least 
end of rope was out of gear, hauled the sail 
up and down for no reason at all, and toiled 
ridiculously, with a vain expenditure of cries and 
action, under the glaring sky that poured down on 
us like hot lead. 

After an hour's passage we reached the island, 
which is thickly planted with fine large trees. 

A flight of regular steps, hewn in the rock, under 

the shade of banyans and bamboos, all tangled with 

flowering creepers, leads straight up to the temple. 

It is a vast hall, dug out of granite and supported 

by massive columns, with capitals of a half-flattened 

spheroidal shape — columns which, seen near, seem 

far too slender to support the immense mass of the 

mountain that rises sheer above the cave under 

a curtain of hanging creepers. The temple opens 

20 



BOMBAY 

to the north, and a very subdued light — like the 

light from a painted window — filtering through the 

ficus branches, lends solemnity and enhanced beauty 

to this titanic architecture. 

The walls are covered with bas-reliefs carved in 

the rock, the roof adorned with architraves of stone 

in infinite repetition of the same designs. The stone 

is grey, varied here and there with broad, black 

stains, and in other spots yellowish, with pale gold 

lights. Some of the sculpture remains still intact. 

The marriage of Siva and Parvati; the bride very 

timid, very fragile, leaning on the arm of the 

gigantic god, whose great height is crowned with 

a monumental tiara. Trimurti, a divinity with 

three faces, calm, smiling, and fierce — the symbol 

of Siva, the creator, the god of mercy, and of wrath. 

In a shadowed corner an elephant's head stands out 

— Ganesa, the god of wisdom, in the midst of a 

circle of graceful, slender, life-like figures of women. 

Quite at the end of the hall, two caryatides, tall and 

elegant, suggest lilies turned to women. In the 

inner sanctuary, a small edifice, with thick stone 

walls pierced with tiny windows that admit but 

a dim light, stands the lingam, a cylinder of stone 

crowned with scarlet flowers that look like flames 

in the doubtful light ; and in deeper darkness, 

21 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

under a stone canopy, another such idol, hardly 
visible. The Brahman priests are constantly en- 
gaged in daubing all the statues of these divinities 
with fresh crimson paint, and the votaries of Siva 
have a spot of the same colour in the middle of 
the forehead. Two lions, rigid in a hieratic 
attitude, keep guard over the entrance to a second 
temple, a good deal smaller and open to the air, 
beyond a courtyard, and screened with an awning 
of creepers. 

In the atmosphere floated a pale blue smoke, 
rising from a heap of weeds that some children 
were burning, a weird sort of incense, acrid and 
aromatic, fading against the too-blue sky. 

As we went down to the shore a whole swarm 
of little dark boys wanted to sell scarabs, rattans, 
birds' nests shaped like pockets, and dream-flowers, 
gathered from the creepers on the temples ; large 
almond-scented lilies, and hanging bunches of the 
ebony-tree flowers, so fragile in texture and already 
faded in the sun, but exhaling till evening a faint 
perfume of verbena and lemon. 

As we returned the wind had fallen, and the 

men rowed. The moon rose pale gold, and in 

the distance, in the violet haze, the lights of 

Bombay mingled with the stars. The boatmen's 

22 



BOMBAY 

chant was very vague, a rocking measure on ascend- 
ing intervals. 



Afternoon, in the bazaar, in the warm glow of 
the sinking sun, wonderfully quiet. No sound 
but that of some workmen's tools; no passers-by, 
no shouting of voices, no bargaining. A few poor 
people stand by the stalls and examine the goods, 
but the seller does not seem to care. Invisible 
guzlas vibrate in the air, and the piping invitation 
of a mooUah falls from the top of a minaret. 

Then, suddenly, there was a clatter of tom-toms, 
and rattling of castanets, a Hindoo funeral passing 
by. The dead lay stretched on a bier, his face 
painted and horrible, a livid grin between the 
dreadful scarlet cheeks, covered with wreaths of 
jasmine and roses. A man walking before the 
corpse carried a jar of burning charcoal to light 
the funeral pile. Friends followed the bier, each 
bringing a log of wood, to add to the pyre as a 
last homage to the dead. 

A Mohammedan funeral now. The body was in 

a coffin, covered with red stuff, sparkling with gold 

thread. The bearers and mourners chanted an almost 

cheerful measure, as they marched very slowly to the 

23 



E:N'CHANTED INDIA 

burial-ground by the seaside, where the dead rest 
under spreading banyans and flowering jasmine. 

Then a Parsee woman stopped my servant to 
ask him if I were a doctor. 

"A doctor? I cannot say/' replied AbibuUa, 
" but the sahib knows many things." The woman's 
eyes entreated me. Would I not come? it would 
comfort the sick man, and help him, perhaps, to 
die easily if the gods would not spare him. 

At the door of the house the sick man's wife 
was washing a white robe, in which he would 
be dressed for the grave on the morrow. The 
nearest relation of the dying must always 
wash his garment, and the woman, knowing that 
her husband had the plague and was doomed, as 
she was required by ritual to prepare for the burial 
while her husband was yet living, wore a look of 
mute and tearless resignation that terrified me. 

The plague -stricken man lay on a low bed 
struggling with anguish ; large drops of sweat 
stood on his face, his throat was wrapped in wet 
bandages, and he spoke with difficulty, as in a 
dream. 

" Pan6, sahib ! "— " Water, sir ! " 

Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep at once, 

and so would he sleep till the end. 

24 



BOMBAY 

Out of doors, meanwhile, one funeral procession 
almost trod on the heels of the last ; at the latest 
gleam of day, and out towards the west, above 
the Field of Burning, a broad red cloud filled all 
one quarter of the sky. 



In the heart of Girgaum, one of the suburbs 
of Bombay, at the end of a street, under a large 
areca palm an old man was selling grain and rice 
in open baskets. A whole flight of bickering 
sparrows settled on his merchandise, and he looked 
at them with happy good humour without scaring 
them away. 

In the town a zebu cow was trotting along with 
an air of business. To avoid a vehicle she jumped 
on to the footpath and went her way along the 
flagstones, and every Hindoo that she passed patted 
her buttock and then touched his forehead with the 
same hand with great reverence. 

Outside Bombay, at the end of an avenue of 
tamarind trees, between hedges starred with lilac 
and pink, we came to Pinjerapoor, the hospital for 
animals. Here, in a sanded garden dotted with 
shrubs and flowers, stand sheds in which sick 
cows, horses and buffaloes are treated and cared for. 

25 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

In another part, in a little building divided into com- 
partments by wire bars, poor crippled dogs whined 
to me as I passed to take them away. Hens wan- 
dered about on wooden legs ; and an ancient parrot, 
in the greatest excitement, yelled with all his might; 
he was undergoing treatment to make his lost 
feathers grow again, his hideous little black body 
being quite naked, with its large head and beak. 
In an open box, overhung with flowering jasmine, 
an Arab horse was suspended to the beams of the 
roof; two keepers by his side waved long white 
horsehair fans to keep away the flies. A perfect 
crowd of servants is employed in the care of the 
animals, and the litter is sweet and clean. 



At Byculla in the evening we went to Grant 

Eoad, the haunt of the street beauties, where the 

gambling-houses are. At the open windows under 

the lighted lamps were coarsely-painted women 

dressed in gaudy finery. In the entries were more 

of such women, sitting motionless in the attitude 

of idols; some of them real marvels — thin, slender 

bronze limbs scarcely veiled in dark, transparent 

gauze, gold rings round their neck and arms, and 

heavy nanparas on their ankles. 

26 



BOMBAY 

One of them was standing against a curtain of 
black satin embroidered with gold; muslin that might 
have been a spider's web hardly cast a mist over 
her sheenless skin, pale, almost white against the 
glistening satin and gold, all brightly lighted up. 
With a large hibiscus flower in her hand she stood 
in a simple attitude, like an Egyptian painting, then 
moved a little, raising or lowering an arm, 
apparently not seeing the passers-by who gazed 
at her — lost in a dream that brought a strange 
green gleam to her dark eyes. 

Japanese girls, too, in every possible hue, with 
piles of tinsel and flowers above their little flat 
faces all covered with saffron and white paint; 
little fidgeting parrakeets flitting from window to 
window, and calling to the people in the street in 
shrill, nasal tones. 

In booths between these houses, the gamblers, 
standing round a board with numbered holes, were 
watching the ball as it slowly spun round, hit the 
edge, seemed to hesitate, and at last fell into one 
of the cups. Four-anna pieces, ten-rupee notes — 
anything will serve as a stake for the Hindoo 
ruffian in a starched shirt-front, low waistcoat and 
white tie, above the dhouti that hangs over his 
bare legs; or for the half-tipsy soldier and sailor, 

27 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the cautious Parsee who rarely puts down a stake, 
or the ragged coolie who has come to tempt fortune 
with his last silver bit. 

All alike were fevered from the deafening music 
of harmoniums and tom-toms performing at the 
back of each gambling-booth — a din that drowned 
shouts of glee and quarrelling. 



Turning out of this high street blazing with lamps, 
were dens of prostitution, and dark, cut-throat alleys. 

Then a quiet little street. Our guide paused in 
front of a whitewashed house. An old woman 
came out, and with many salaams and speeches of 
welcome led us into a large, low room. 

Here, one by one, in came the nautch - girls, 
dancers. Eobed in stiff sarees, their legs encum- 
bered with very full trousers, they stood extra- 
vagantly upright, their arms away from their sides 
and their hands hanging loosely. At the first sound 
of the tambourines, beaten by men who squatted 
close to the wall, they began to dance ; jumping 
forward on both feet, then backward, striking their 
ankles together to make their nanparas ring, very 
heavy anklets weighing on their feet, bare with 

silver toe-rings. One of them spun on and on for a 

28 



BOMBAY 

long time, while the others held a high, shrill note 
— higher, shriller still; then suddenly everything 
stopped, the music first, then the dancing — in the 
air, as it were — and the nautch- girls, huddled 
together like sheep in a corner of the room, tried to 
move us with the only three English words they 
knew, the old woman repeating them ; and as finally 
we positively would not understand, the jumping 
and idiotic spinning and shouts began again in the 
heated air of the room. 

" Nautch-girls for tourists, like Europeans," said 
my Indian servant AbibuUa. " Can-can dancing- 
girls," he added, with an air of triumph at having 
shown me a wonder. 



At the top of Malabar Hill, in a garden with 

freshly raked walks and clumps of flowers edged 

with pearl-shells, stand five limewashed towers, 

crowned with a living battlement of vultures : the 

great Dokma, the Towers of Silence, where the 

Parsees are laid after death, "as naked as when 

they came into the world and as they must return 

to nothingness," to feed the birds of prey, which by 

the end of a few hours leave nothing of the body 

but the bones, to bleach in the sun and be scorched 

29 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

to dust that is soon carried down to the sea by the 
first rains of the monsoon. 

One of these towers, smaller than the others, and 
standing apart at the end of the garden, is used for 
those who have committed suicide. The bearers of 
the dead dwell in a large yellow house roofed with 
zinc. There they live, apart from the world, never 
going down to Bombay but to fetch a corpse and 
bring it up to the vultures, nor daring to mingle 
with the living till after nine days of purification. 

In another building is the hall where the dastours 
say the last prayers over the dead in the presence 
of the relations; the body is then stripped in a 
consecrated chamber and abandoned to the mysteries 
of the tow^er. 

On the great banyan trees in the garden, and on 
every palm, torpid vultures sit in the sun, awaiting 
the meal that will come with the next funeral 
procession. 

Far away a murmur is heard, a long-drawn chant, 
suddenly arousing the birds ; they flap their wings, 
stretch themselves clumsily, and then fly towards 
one of the towers. 

We could see the procession coming straight up 

a hollow ravine from the valley to the Dokma, a 

path that none but Parsees are allowed to tread; 

30 



BOMBAY 

eight bearers in white, the bier also covered with 
white, and, far behind, the relations and friends of 
the dead, all robed in white, two and two, each pair 
holding between them a square of white stuff in 
sign of union. They came very slowly up the steps 
of the steep ascent with a measured chant, in 
muffled tones, on long-drawn vowels. And from 
the surrounding trees, from far and near, with a 
great flutter of wings, the vultures flew to meet the 
corpse, darkening the sky for a moment. 



In the evening, as I again went past the Towers 
of Silence, the palm trees were once more crowded 
with sleeping birds gorged with all the food sent 
them by the plague. On the other side of Back 
Bay, above the Field of Burning, a thick column of 
smoke rose up, red in the last beams of the crimson 
sun. 

In the silence of a moonless night nine o'clock 
struck from the great tower of the Law Courts — a 
pretty set of chimes, reminding me of Bruges or 
Antwerp ; and when the peal had died away a bugle 
in the sepoys' quarters took up the strain of the 
chimes, only infinitely softer, saddened to a minor 
key and to a slower measure ; while in the distance 

31 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

an English trumpet, loud and clear, sounded the 
recall in counterpart. 



Outside the town the carriage went on for a long 
time through a poverty-stricken quarter, and past 
plots of ground dug out for the erection of factories. 
Fragile flowers, rose and lilac, bloomed in the shade 
of banyans and palm trees. Hedges of jasmine and 
bougainvillea, alternating with rose trees, scented the 
air. Then we came to Parel, a suburb where, in a 
spacious enclosure, stands the hospital for infectious 
diseases. It is a lofty structure of iron, the roof 
and walls of matting, which is burnt when infected 
with microbes, and which allows the free passage 
of the air. In spite of the heat outside it was 
almost cool in these shady halls. 

All the sick were sudras, Hindoos of the lowest 
caste. All the rest, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisiyas, 
would rather die at home, uncared for, than endure 
the promiscuous mixture of caste at the hospital, 
and contact with their inferiors. Even the sudras 
are but few. There is an all-pervading dread of 
a hospital, fostered by Indian bone - setters and 
sorcerers, stronger even than the fear of the pesti- 
lence; the people hide themselves to die, like 

32 



BOMBAY 

wounded animals, and their relations will not speak 
of an illness for fear of seeing anybody belonging 
to them taken to the hospital. 

All the sufferers lay on thin mattresses spread 
on low camp beds; they were all quiet, torpid 
in the sleep of fever. The doctor showed them to 
me, one after another ; there was nothing dis- 
tressing to be seen in their naked bodies lying 
under a sheet. Some, indeed, had dressings under 
the arm, or on the groin. One, who had just been 
brought in, had a large swelling above the hip, a 
gland which was lanced to inject serum. 

This, then, is the malady of the appalling name — 
the Plague — hardened glands in the throat or under 
the arm; the disease that gives its victim fever, 
sends him to sleep, exhausts, and infallibly kills 
him. 

In the ward we had just passed through there 
were none but convalescents or favourable cases. 
At the further end of the room a boy, fearfully 
emaciated, so thin that his body, lying in the hollow 
of the mattress, was hardly visible under the cover- 
ing, was asleep as we approached. He had come 
from one of the famine districts, and in escaping 
from one scourge had come to where the other 

had clutched him. The doctor touched him on the 
D 33 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

shoulder, and he opened his great splendid eyes. 
The awakening brought him gladness, or perhaps 
it was the end of his dream, for he had the happy 
look of a contented child, shook his shaven head 
waggishly, and the single corkscrew lock at the 
top, and was asleep again instantly. 

In the further room were four sufferers past all 
hope : one in the anguish of delirium that made 
him cry out the same words again and again, in 
a hoarse voice that was growing fainter. He was 
held by two attendants. Another lay with chatter- 
ing teeth; a third was struggling violently, hidden 
under his coverlet; the fourth seemed unconscious, 
apathetic. 

N"ot far from the great hospital, in huts of bamboo 
and matting, some Hindoos were isolated, who re- 
fused to be attended by any but native doctors, or 
to take anything but simples. An old man lay 
there who had a sort of stiff white paste applied 
to the swellings under his arms. He, too, was 
delirious, and watched us go by with a vague, 
stupefied glare — eyes that were already dead. 

In another hut was a woman, brought hither 

yesterday with her husband, who had died that 

morning. She had an exquisite, long, pale face 

and blue -black hair. On her arms were many 

34 



BOMBAY 

bangles, and gold earrings glittered in her ears. 
Tor a moment she opened her large gazelle-like 
eyes, and then with a very sad little sigh turned 
to the wall, making her trinkets rattle. She was 
still dressed in her blue choli. A striped coverlet 
had been thrown over her; by her bed she had a 
whole set of burnished copper pans and canisters. 
Charmingly pretty, and not yet exhausted by the 
disease, which only declared itself yesterday, she 
was sleeping quietly, more like a being in a story- 
book than a plague-stricken creature, who must 
infallibly die on the morrow under the incapable 
treatment of the Hindoo "bone-setter." 

And then we came away from this hospital, 
where no sister of charity, no woman even, had 
brought some little consolation or the kindliness 
of a smile to these dying creatures, whose wander- 
ing or frantic black eyes haunted me. 



35 



ENCHANTED INDIA 



ELLORA 

THE SACRED HILL 

At sunrise we reached ISTandgaun, whence I went 
on towards Ellora in a tonga, the Indian post-chaise, 
with two wheels and a wide awning so low and so 
far forward that the traveller must stoop to look out 
at the landscape. A rosy haze still hung over the 
country, rent in places and revealing transparent 
blue hills beyond the fields of crude green barley 
and rice. The road was hedged with mimosa, 
cassia, and a flowering thorny shrub, looking like 
a sort of honeysuckle with yellow blossoms, and 
smelling strongly of ginger. 

"We met a strange caravan ; a small party of men 

surrounding more than a hundred women wrapped 

in dark robes, and bearing on their veiled heads 

heavy bales sewn up in matting, and large copper 

pots. A little blind boy led the way, singing a 

monotonous chant of three high notes. He came 

up to my tonga, and to thank me for the small coin 

I gave him he said, "Salaam, Sahib," and then 

repeated the same words again and again to his 

36 



ELLOEA 

tune, dancing a little step of his own invention 
till the whole caravan was hidden from me in a 
cloud of dust. 

In a copse, women, surrounded by naked children, 
were breaking stones, which men carried to the 
road. The women screamed, hitting the hard 
pebbles with a too small pick, the children fought, 
the men squabbled and scolded, and amid all this 
hubbub three Parsees, sitting at a table under the 
shade of a tamarind tree, were adding up lines of 
figures on papers fluttering in the wind. There was 
not a dwelling in sight, no sign of an encampment, 
nothing but these labouring folk and the bureau- 
cracy out in the open air, under the beating sun. 

Next came a long file of carts, conveying cases of 
goods " made in Manchester,'' or loaded, in unstable 
equilibrium, with dry yellow fodder like couch grass, 
eaten by the horses here ; and they struggled along 
the road which, crossing the limitless plain, appeared 
to lead nowhere. 

When we stopped to change horses, two or three 
mud-huts under the shade of a few palm trees 
would emit an escort of little native boys, who 
followed the fresh team, staring at the carriage 
and the "Inglis Sahib" with a gaze of rapturous 
stupefaction. 

37 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Flocks of almost tame partridges and wood- 
pigeons occupying the road did not fly till they 
were almost under the horses' feet, and all the way 
as we went, we saw, scampering from tree to tree, 
the scared little squirrels, grey with black stripes 
and straight-up bushy tails. 

At the frontier of the Nizam's territory, a man-at- 
arms, draped in white, and mounted on a horse that 
looked like silver in the sunshine, sat with a lance 
in rest against his stirrup. He gazed passively at 
the distance, not appearing to see us, not even 
bowing. 

Towards evening EUora came in sight, the sacred 
hill crowned with temples, in a blaze of glory at 
first from the crimson sunset, and then vaguely 
blue, wiped out, vanishing in the opalescent mist. 

At Eoza, the plateau above the Hindoo sanctuaries, 
above a dozen of Moslem mausoleums are to be 
seen under the spreading banyans that shelter them 
beneath their shade, and sometimes hide them com- 
pletely ; the white objects are in a whimsical style 
of architecture, hewn into strange shapes, which in 
the doubtful starlight might be taken for ruins. 

One of these mausoleums served us for a bun- 
galow. The distance was visible from the window 

openings, which were fringed with cuscus blinds 

38 



ELLORA 

that would be pulled down at night : the spreading 
dark plain, broken by gleaming pools, and dotted 
with the lamps in the temples to Yishnu, of which 
the cones were visible in silhouette, cutting the 
clear horizon. 

The almost imperceptible hum of a bagpipe came 
up from below ; in a white mosque of open 
colonnades enclosing a paved court, and in front 
of the little lamps that burned above the holy of 
holies sheltering the Koran, figures in light gar- 
ments were prostrate in prayer; their murmurs 
came up to us in sighs, mingling with the. slow and 
tender notes of the music. 

Eising from the highest point of the hill the huge 
tomb of Aurungzeeb the Great — more huge in the 
darkness — stood out clearly, a black mass, its 
bulbous dome against the sky. Flocks of goats 
and sheep came clambering along the ridge to 
shelter for the night in the recesses of its walls. 
Then, one by one, the lights died out. Infinite 
calm brooded over the scene; a very subtle fragrance, 
as of rose and verbena, seemed to rise from the 
ground and scent the still air ; and over the motion- 
less earth swept enormous black bats in silent flight, 
with slow, regularly -beating wings. 



39 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At the first ray of sunrise I went down to the 
temples, hewn out of the side of the hill and extend- 
ing for above a mile and a quarter. Gigantic stairs 
are cut in the rock, and lead to caves enshrining 
immense altars, on which Buddha or other idols of 
enormous size are enthroned. Hall after hall is 
upheld by carved pillars. Bas-reliefs on the walls 
represent the beatitudes of Krishna surrounded by 
women, or the vengeance of Vishnu the terrible, or 
the marriage of Siva and Parvati ; while on the fiat 
roof, on the panels and architraves — all part of the 
solid rock — there is an endless procession of Krishnas 
and Vishnus, on a rather smaller scale, producing 
utter weariness of their unvaried attitudes and 
beatific or infuriated grimacing. 

One temple to Buddha only, on an elongated plan, 
ends in a vault forming a bulb-shaped cupola sup- 
ported on massive columns, quite Byzantine in 
character and wholly unexpected. The dim light, 
coming in only through a low door and two small 
windows filled in with pierced carving, enhances 
the impression of being in some ancient European 
fane, and the Buddha on the high altar has a look 
of suffering and emaciation that suggests a work of 
the fourteenth century. 

More temples, each more stupendous than the 

40 



ELLOEA 

last, and more halls hewn in the rifts of the hills, 
and over them monks' cells perched on little columns, 
which at such a height look no thicker than threads. 

And there, under the open sky, stands the crown- 
ing marvel of Ellora, the temple or Kailas, enclosed 
within a wall thirty metres high, pierced with panels, 
balconies, and covered arcades, and resting on lions 
and elephants of titanic proportions. This temple 
is hewn out of a single rock, isolated from the hill, 
and is divided into halls ornamented in high relief. 
Covered verandahs run all round the irregular mass 
in two storeys, reminding us, in their elaborate 
design, of the Chinese balls of carved ivory with 
other balls inside them. J^othing has been added or 
built on. The complicated architecture — all in one 
piece, without cement or the smallest applied orna- 
ment—makes one dizzy at the thought of such a 
miracle of perseverance and patience. 

The external decoration is broken by broad flat 

panels, incised in places so delicately that the 

patterns look like faded fresco, scarcely showing 

against the gold-coloured ground of yellow stone. 

In front of the Kailas stand two tall obelisks, carved 

from top to bottom with an extraordinary feeling for 

proportion which makes them seem taller still, and 

two gigantic elephants, guardians of the sanctuary, 

41 



EI^CHANTED INDIA 

heavy, massive images of stone, worm-eaten by time 
into tiny holes and a myriad wrinkles, producing 
a perfect appearance of the coarse skin of the 
living beast. 

In the twilight of the great galleries the gods are 
assembled in groups, standing or sitting, rigid or 
contorted into epileptic attitudes, and thin bodies 
of human aspect end in legs or arms resembling 
serpents or huge fins, rather than natural limbs: 
Kali, the eight-armed goddess, leaping in the midst 
of daggers, performing a straddling dance while she 
holds up a tiny corpse on the point of the short 
sword she brandishes; impassible Sivas wearing a 
tall mitre; Krishna playing the flute to the thou- 
sand virgins who are in love with him, and who fade 
into perspective on the panel. And every divinity 
has eyes of jade, or of white plaster, hideously visible 
against the pale grey stone softly polished by time. 

Amid hanging swathes of creepers, in a fold of the 
hill stands another temple, of red stone, very gloomy; 
and, in its depths, a rigid white Buddha, with 
purple shadows over his eyes of glittering crystal. 
And so on to temples innumerable, so much alike 
that, seeing each for the first time, I fancied that I 
was retracing my steps; and endless little shrine- 
like recesses, sheltering each its Buddha, make blots 

42 



ELLORA 

of shadow on the brisfht ochre- coloured stone of the 
cliffs. For centuries, in the rainy season, thousands 
of pilgrims have come, year after year, to take up 
their abode in these cells, spending the cold weather 
in prayer and then going off to beg their living and 
coming back for the next wet season. 

The Yiharas, monasteries of cells hollowed out in 
the hillside, extend for more than half a mile ; briars 
and creepers screen the entrances leading to these 
little retreats, a tangle of flowers and carvings. 

As the sun sank, a magical light of lilac fading 
into pink fell on the mountain temples, on the 
rock partly blackened by ages or scorched to pale 
yellow, almost white ; it shed an amethystine glow, 
transfiguring the carved stone to lacework with 
light showing through. A wheeling flock of noisy 
parrakeets filled the air with short, unmeaning 
cries, intolerable in this rose and lavender still- 
ness, where no sound could be endurable but 
the notes of an organ. A ray of fiery gold 
shot straight into the red temple, falling on the 
marble Buddha. For a moment the idol seemed 
to be on fire, surrounded by a halo of burning 
copper. 

Under the cool shade of evening, the softening 

43 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

touch of twilight, all this sculptured magnificence 
assumes an air of supreme grandeur, and calls up 
a world of legends and beliefs till the temples seem 
to recede, fading into the vapour of the blue night. 

While I spent the hot hours of the day in the 
bungalow, a flock of birds came in through the 
open doors, and quietly picked up the crumbs on 
the floor. They were followed by grey squirrels, 
which at first crouched in the corners, but 
presently, growing bolder, ended by climbing on 
to the table, with peering eyes, in hope of nuts 
or bread-crusts. 

We were off by break of day. Among hanging 
creepers, shrubs, and trees, temples, gilded by the 
rising sun, gleamed dimly through the rosy mist, 
and faded gradually behind a veil of white dust 
raised by the flocks coming down from Eoza, or 
melted into the dazzling blaze of light over the 
distance. 

At Jane the pagodas are of red stone. The 

largest, conical in shape, covers with its ponderous 

roof, overloaded with sculptured figures of gods 

and animals, a very small passage, at the end of. 

which two lights burning hardly reveal a white 

idol standing amid a perfect carpet of flowers. 

Bound the sacred tank that lies at the base of the 

44 



JANE 

temple, full of stagnant greenish-white water, are 
flights of steps in purple-hued stone ; at the angles, 
twelve little conical kiosks, also of red stone and 
highly decorated, shelter twelve similar idols, but 
black. And between the temples, among the few 
huts that compose the village of Jane, stand 
Moslem mausoleums and tombs. Verses from the 
Koran are carved on the stones, now scarceyl 
visible amid the spreading briars and garlands of 
creepers hanging from the tall trees that are 
pushing their roots between the flagstones that 
cover the dead. 

Before us the road lay pink in colour, with 
purple lines where the pebbles were as yet un- 
crushed ; it was hedged with blossoming thorn- 
bushes, and among the yellow and violet flowers 
parrots were flitting, and screaming minahs, large 
black birds with russet-brown wings, gleaming in 
the sun like burnished metal. 

The post-chaise was a tonga, escorted by a 

mounted sowar, armed with a naked sword. He 

rode ahead at a rattling trot, but the clatter was 

drowned by the shouts of the driver and of the 

sais, who scrambled up on the steps and urged 

the steeds on with excited flogging. 

45 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At a stopping-place a flock of sheep huddled 
together in terror, hens scattered about clucking 
anxiously, the stable dogs crouched and slunk; 
high overhead a large eagle was slowly wheeling 
in the air. 

Eound a village well, enclosed by walls with 
heavy doors that are always shut at night, a perfect 
flower-bed of young women had gathered, slender 
figures wrapped in robes of bright, light colours, 
drawing water in copper jars. The sunbeams, 
dropping between the leaves of a baobab tree that 
spread its immense expanse of boughs over the 
well, sparkled on their trinkets and the copper 
pots, dappling the gaudy hues of their raiment 
with flickering gold. 



NANDGAUN 

Is a long row of bungalows in their own gardens, 

on each side of an avenue of thick trees that 

meet above the road. We crossed the bed of a 

dry torrent and came to the native village, a 

labyrinth of clay huts and narrow alleys through 

which goats and cows wandered, finding their way 

home to their own stables. On a raised terrace 

46 



NANDGAUN 

three Parsees, bowing to the sun with clasped 
hands, prostrated themselves in adoration, and 
watched the crimson globe descend wrapped in 
golden haze ; and as soon as the disc had 
vanished, leaving a line of fiery light in the sky, 
all three rose, touched each other's hands, passed 
their fingers lightly over their faces, and resumed 
their conversation. 

In every house a tiny lamp allowed us to see 
the women, squatting while they pounded millet, 
or cooked in copper pots. Then night suddenly 
fell, and I could no longer find my way about 
the dark alleys, stumbling as I went over cows 
lying across the path, till I suddenly found my- 
self opposite a very tall pagoda, three storeys 
high. On the threshold the bonzes were banging 
with all their might on gongs and drums, alter- 
nately with bells. And on the opposite side of 
the street, in a sort of shed enclosed on three 
sides, but wide open to the passers-by, people in 
gay robes were prostrate before two shapeless 
idols, Krishna and Vishnu, painted bright red, 
twinkling with ornaments of tinsel and lead-paper, 
and crudely lighted up by lamps with reflectors. 
And then at once I was between low houses again, 
and going down tortuous streets to the river-bed, 

47 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

whither I was guided by the sound of castanets 
and tambourines. 

At the further end of the last turning I saw a 
fire like blazing gold, the soaring flames flying up 
to an enormous banyan tree, turning its leaves to 
living fire. All round the pile on which the dead 
was being burned was a crowd drumming on copper 
pots and tom-toms. 

Very late in the evening came the sound of dar- 
boukhas once more. A throng of people, lighted up 
by a red glow, came along, escorting a car drawn 
by oxen. At each of the four corners were children 
carrying torches, and in the middle of the car a tall 
pole was fixed. On this, little Hindoo boys were 
performing the most extraordinary acrobatic tricks, 
climbing it with the very tips of their toes and 
fingers, sliding down again head foremost, and stop- 
ping within an inch of the floor. Their bronze 
skins, in contrast to the white loin-cloth that cut 
them across the middle, and their fine muscular 
limbs, made them look like antique figures. The 
performance went on to the noise of drums and 
singing, and was in honour of the seventieth birthday 
of a Mohammedan witch who dwelt in the village. 

The car presently moved off, and, after two or three 

48 



ISTANDGAUN 

stoppages, reached the old woman's door. The 
toothless hag, her face carved into black furrows, 
under a towzle of white hair emerging from a 
ragged kerchief, with a stupid stare lighted up by 
a gleam of wickedness when she fixed an eye, sat 
on the ground in her hovel surrounded by an 
unspeakable heap of rags and leavings. The crowd 
squeezed in and gathered round her; but she sat 
perfectly unmoved, and the little acrobats, perform- 
ing in front of her door, did not win a glance from 
her. And then, the noise and glare annoying her 
probably, she turned with her face to the wall and 
remained so. She never quitted her lair; all she 
needed was brought to her by the villagers, who 
dreaded the spells she could cast. Her reputation 
for wisdom and magic had spread far and wide. 
The Nizam's cousin, and prime minister of the 
dominion, never fails to pay her a visit when pass- 
ing through Nandgaun, and other even greater 
personages, spoken of only with bated breath, 
have been known to consult her. 



49 



ENCHANTED INDIA 



BARODA 

An old-world Indian city with nothing of modern 
flimsiness and tinsel. The arcades and balconies of 
the houses in the bazaar are carved out of solid 
wood, polished by ages to tones of burnished steel 
and warm gold. Copper nails in the doors shine 
in the sun. Along the quiet streets, where nothing 
passes by but, now and then, a slow-paced camel, 
Hindoos make their way, draped in pale pink, or 
in white scarely tinged with green or orange colour ; 
little naked children, with necklaces, bangles and 
belts of silver, looking like ribbons on their bronze 
skin. In front of the shops is a brilliant harmony 
of copper, sheeny fruits, and large pale green pots. 
A glad atmosphere of colour surrounds the smiling 
people and the houses with their old scorched 
stones. 

The coachman we engaged at the station was a 
giant, with an olive skin and a huge, pale pink tur- 
ban. He was clad in stuffs so thin that on his box, 
against the light, we could see the shape of his 
body through the thickness of five or six tunics 

that he wore one over another. 

50 



BARODA 

After passing through the town, all flowery 
with green gardens, at the end of a long, white, 
dusty road, where legions of beggars followed 
me, calling me "Papa" and "Bab," that is to say 
father and mother, I arrived at the residence of the 
Gaekwar, the Eajah of Baroda. At the gate we 
met the palace sentries released from duty. Eight 
men in long blue pugarees and an uniform of 
yellow khakee (a cotton stuff), like that of the 
sepoys, with their guns on their shoulders, looked 
as if they were taking a walk, marching in very 
fantastic step. One of them had a bird hopping 
about in a little round cage that hung from the 
stock of his gun. Three camels brought up the 
rear, loaded with bedding in blue cotton bundles. 

In the heart of an extensive park, where wide 
lawns are planted with gigantic baobabs and clumps 
of bamboo and tamarind, stands an important- 
looking building, hideously modern in a mixture of 
heterogeneous styles and materials, of a crude yellow 
colour, and much too new. There is no attempt at 
unity of effect. A central dome crowns the edifice 
and a square tower rises by the side of it. Some 
portions, like pavilions, low and small, carry orna- 
ments disproportioned to their size; while others, 

containing vast halls, have minute windows pierced 

51 



EJ^CHANTED IXDIA 

in their walls, hardly larger than loopholes, but 
framed in elaborate sculpture and lost in the great 
mass of stone. Arcades of light and slender columns, 
connected by lace-like pierced work of alarming 
fragility, enclose little courts full of tree-ferns and 
waving palms spreading over large pools of water. 
The walls are covered with niches, balconies, 
pilasters, and balustrades carved in the Indian 
style, the same subjects constantly repeated. 

Inside, after going through a long array of rooms 
filled with sham European furniture — handsome 
chairs and sofas covered with plush, Brussels carpets 
with red and yellow flowers on a green ground — 
we came to the throne-room, an enormous, prepos- 
terous hall, which, with its rows of cane chairs and 
its machine-made Gothic woodwork, was very like 
the waiting-room or dining-room of an American 
hotel. 

The Eajah being absent we were allowed to see 

everything. On the upper floor is the Eanee's 

dressing-room. All round the large room were 

glass wardrobes, in which could be seen bodices 

in the latest Paris fashion, and ugly enough; and 

then a perfect rainbow of tender opaline hues: 

light silks as fine as cobwebs, shawls of every 

dye in Cashmere wool with woven patterns, and 

52 



BAEODA 

gauze of that delicate rose-colour and of the yellow 
that looks like gold with the light shining through, 
which are only to be seen in India — royal fabrics, 
dream-colours, carefully laid up in sandal- wood and 
stored behind glass and thick curtains, which were 
dropped over them as soon as we had looked. And 
crowding every table and bracket were the most 
childish things — screens, cups and boxes in imita- 
tion bronze, set with false stones — the playthings 
of a little barbarian. A coloured photograph stood 
on the toilet-table between brushes and pomatum- 
pots ; it represented the mistress of this abode, a 
slender doll without brains, her eyes fixed on 
vacancy. 

Then her bedroom : no bed, only a vast mattress 
rolled up against the wall, and spread over the 
floor every night — it must cover the whole room. 

At the end of the passage was a sort of den, 
where, through the open door, I caught sight of 
a marvellous Indian hanging of faded hues on a 
pale ground, hidden in places by stains ; the noble 
pattern represented a peacock spreading his tail 
between two cypresses. 

In front of the palace, beds filled with common 

plants familiar in every European garden fill the 

place of honour; they are very rare, no doubt, in 

53 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

these latitudes, and surprising amid the gorgeous 
hedges of wild bougainvillea that enclose the park. 

In the train again, en route for Ahmedabad. As 
we crossed the fertile plain of Gujerat the first 
monkeys were to be seen, in families, in tribes, 
perched on tall pine trees, chasing each other, or 
swinging on the wires that rail in the road, and 
solemnly watching the train go by. Peacocks 
marched about with measured step, and spread their 
tails in the tall banyan trees tangled with flowering 
creepers. Shyer than these, the grey secretary birds, 
with a red roll above their beak, seemed waiting to 
fly as we approached. On the margin of the lakes 
and streams thousands of white cranes stood fishing, 
perched on one leg ; and in every patch of tobacco, 
or dahl, or cotton, was a hut perched on four piles, 
its boarded walls and leaf-thatch giving shelter to 
a naked native, watching to scare buffaloes, birds, 
monkeys, and thieves from his crop. 



54 



AHMED ABAD 



AHMEDABAD 

In the middle of the town, which consists en- 
tirely of small houses carved from top to bottom, 
are two massive towers, joined by the remains of 
the thick wall that formerly enclosed the immensity 
of the sultan's palace and its outbuildings. The 
towers now serve as prisons ; the stone lattice which 
screened the private rooms has been replaced by 
iron bars, the last traces of ornamentation covered 
up with fresh plaster. Behind the wall the ancient 
garden, kept green of old by legions of gardeners, 
is a mere desert of dust; a mausoleum in the middle, 
transformed into a court of justice, displays all the 
perfection of Indian art in two pointed windows 
carved and pierced in imitation of twining and 
interlaced branches ; marvels of delicacy and grace 
left intact through centuries of vandalism. 

Beyond these ruins, at the end of a long avenue 

bordered with tamarind trees, beyond an artificial 

lake, is the tomb of Shah Alam. A wide marble 

court; to the right a mosque with three ranks of 

columns; above, a massive roof crowned with a 

55 



EKCHANTED INDIA 

bulbous dome, flanked by fragile minarets. The 
fountain for ablutions in the midst of the court is 
surmounted by a marble slab supported on slender 
columns. To the left, under the shade of a large 
tree, is the mausoleum of marble, yellow with age, 
looking like amber, the panels pierced with patterns 
of freer design than goldsmith's work. 

Inside, a subdued light, rosy and golden, comes 
in through the myriad interstices, casting a glow of 
colour on the pierced marble screens which enclose 
the tomb of Shah Alam, Sultan of Gujerat. The 
tomb itself, hung with a red cloth under a canopy 
on posts inlaid with mother-of-pearl, is dimly seen 
in the twilight, scarcely touched here and there with 
the pearly gleam and lights reflected from ostrich 
eggs and glass balls — toys dedicated by the faithful 
to the hero who lies there in his last sleep. Yet 
further away, under the trees, is another tomb, 
almost the same, but less ornamented, where the 
sultan's wives repose. 

Finally, in a third mosque, lies Shah Alam's 
brother. On the stone that covers him a sheet of 
lead bears the print of two gigantic feet, intended 
to perpetuate to all ages the remembrance of his 
enormous height. 



56 



AHMED ABAD 

In the town is the tomb of the Eanee Sipri : 
walls of lace, balconies of brocade carved in stone. 
Opposite this mausoleum are an open mosque and 
two minarets as slim as sapling pines, wrought with 
arabesques as fine as carved ivory. There are lamps 
carved in relief on the walls, each hung by chains 
under-cut in stone with Chinese elaboration; and 
this lamp is everywhere repeated — on the mosque, 
on the tomb, and on the base of the minarets. The 
building, which has the faintly russet tone of old 
parchment, when seen in the glow of sunset takes 
a hue of ruby gold that is almost diaphanous, as 
filmy as embroidered gauze. 

Wherever the alleys cross in the bazaar, open 
cages are placed on pillars of carved marble or 
wood, and in these, charitable hands place grain for 
the birds ; thus every evening, round these shelters 
there is a perpetual flutter of pigeons, minahs, and 
sparrows, pushing for places, and finally packed 
closely together, while the little lanterns flash out 
on all sides, giving a magical aspect to the shop- 
fronts, turning copper to gold, fruit to flowers, and 
falling like a caress on the wayfarers in thin 
pale-hued robes. 

Back to the station, where we lived in our 

carriage, far more comfortable than a hotel bed- 

57 



EIS^CHANTED INDIA 

room. T., my tja veiling companion in Gujerat, 
received a visit from a gentleman badly dressed in 
the European fashion, and followed by black ser- 
vants outrageously bedizened. "When this personage 
departed in his landau, rather shabby but drawn by 
magnificent horses, T. was obliged to tell me he was 
a rajah — the Eajah of Surat — quite a genuine rajah, 
and even very rich, which is somewhat rare in these 
days among Indian princes. 

Some prisoners were brought to the train; a 
single sepoy led them by a chain. Two carried 
enormous bales, and the third a heavy case. They 
packed themselves into a compartment that was 
almost full already, and one of a couple that were 
chained together by the wrists put the chain round 
his neck; then, when he had scraped acquaintance 
with the other travellers, he amused himself by 
tormenting the hawkers of drink and pastry, bar- 
gaining with them for a long time and buying 
nothing, quite delighted when he had put them 
in a rage with him. 

In the third-class carriages, where the compart- 
ments are divided by wooden lattice, among the 
bundles, the copper jars, and the trunks painted in 
the gaudiest colours, sit women in showy saree and 

decked in all their jewels ; children in little silk 

58 



AHMED ABAD 

coats braided with tinsel, and open over their little 
bare bodies ; men with no garment whatever but a 
loin-cloth or dhouti. There is endless chatter, a 
perpetual bickering for places, the bewilderment 
of those who lose themselves, shouts from one end 
of the station to the other, and in the foreground 
of the hubbub the incessant cries of the water and 
sweetmeat sellers. 

When the express had arrived that morning from 
Bombay, eight bodies were found of victims to the 
plague who had died on the way. They were laid 
on the platform and covered with a white sheet ; 
and in the station there was a perfect panic, a surge 
of terror which spread to the town, and broke up 
the market. The shops were all shut, and the 
people rushed to their knees before the idols in 
the temples. 

A naked fakir, his brown skin plastered with 
flour, and his long black hair all matted, bent over 
the bodies muttering holy words; then flourishing 
two yellow rags that he took out of a wallet hang- 
ing from his shoulder, he exorcised the station, 
driving away the spectre of the pestilence; going 
very fast, running along the line by which the 
evil had come, and vanishing where the rails ended 

behind the trees. 

59 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Music attracted us to where the cross-roads met, 
darboukhas struck with rapid fingers and a bagpipe 
droning out a lively tune. The musicians sat among 
stones and bricks, tapping in quick time on their 
ass's -skin drums, beating a measure for some 
masons to work to. Women carried the bricks 
men spread the mortar; they all sang and worked 
with almost dancing movements in time with the 
music, as if they were at play. 

A Jain temple. A confusion of ornament, carved 
pillars, capitals far too heavy, with a medley of 
animals, gods and flowers, under a roof all graven 
and embossed. In the sanctuary, where the walls 
are riddled with carving, is an enormous Buddha of 
black marble decked out with emeralds, gold beads 
and rare pearls, hanging in necklaces down to his 
waist. A large diamond blazes in his forehead 
above crystal eyes, terrifically bright. Every even- 
ing all this jewellery — the gift of Hati Singh, a 
wealthy Jain merchant who built the"- temple — is 
packed away into a strong-box, which we were 
shown in the cellar. 

All round the sanctuary, in niches under a square 
cloister, are three hundred and fifty alabaster 
Buddhas, all alike, with the same jewel in their fore- 
head, and on their shoulders and round their bodies 

60 



AHMEDABAD 

gold bands set with imitation gems and cut glass. 
An old woman, who had come thither at daybreak, 
had prayed to each of these Buddhas; to each she 
had offered up the same brief petition, she had 
struck the three bells on her way, and she was 
now in the sanctuary, calling out a prayer while 
beating a gong that hangs from the arch. Mean- 
while other worshippers were murmuring their 
invocations prostrate before the jewelled Buddha. 

Out in the street a woman, bare-backed, was 
submitting to be brushed down the spine by a 
neighbour with a brush of cuscus ; she scorned to 
answer me when I asked whether she felt better, 
but shutting her eyes desired the operator to go 
on more slowly. 

In an ancient mosque, somewhat dilapidated, was 
an infant-school. Little heaps of stuff, pink and 
yellow and white, and above them emaciated little 
faces with large dark eyes that had greenish-blue 
lights in them, all moving and rocking continually, 
and spelling aloud out of open books set up on 
wooden folding desks. The master in his pulpit 
listened stolidly with half-shut eyes, and detected 
the mistakes in all this twitter of little voices. 

Not far from Ahmedabad, in a sandy desert 

61 



ENCHA:NTED INDIA 

where, nevertheless, a few proliferous baobabs 
grow, there is a subterranean pagoda drowned in 
stagnant water that has filled three out of the 
six floors. These are now sacred baths, in which, 
when I went there, Hindoos were performing their 
pious ablutions. Sculptured arcades, upheld by 
fragile columns, skirt the pools ; the stones are 
green under the water, and undistinguishable from 
the architecture reflected in the motionless surface 
that looks blue under the shadow of the great 
banyan trees meeting in an arch over the temple. 
A sickly scent of lotus and sandal-wood fills the 
moist air, and from afar, faint and shrill, the 
cries of monkeys and minah-birds die away into 
silence over the calm pool. 

A little way off, in the burning sandy plain, is 
a pagoda sacred to the pigeons. Lying as close 
as tiles, in the sun, they hide the roof under 
their snowy plumage. Eound pots are hung all 
about the building, swaying in the wind, for the 
birds to nest in, a red decoration against the russet 
stone ; each one contains an amorous and cooing 
pair. 

The Jumna Musjid, in the middle of the bazaar, is 

a reminder of the mosque at Cordova. A thousand 

62 



AHMED ABAD 

unmatched columns stand in utter confusion of 
irregular lines, producing a distressing sensation of 
an unfinished structure ready to fall into ruins. 
Every style is here, and materials of every de- 
scription, brought hither — as we are told by the 
inscription engraved over one of the lofty pointed 
doorways — from the temples of the unbelievers 
destroyed by Shah Mahmoud Bogarat, the taker 
of cities, that he might, out of their remains, raise 
this mosque to the glory of Allah. In the centre 
of the arcade a large flagstone covers the Jain 
idol, which was formerly worshipped here; and my 
servant AbibuUa, as a good Moslem, stamped his 
foot on the stone under which lies the " contempt- 
ible image." Some workmen were carving a column; 
they had climbed up and squatted balanced ; they 
held their tools with their toes, just chipping at the 
marble in a way that seemed to make no impres- 
sion, chattering all the time in short words that 
seemed all of vowels. 

Behind this mosque, by narrow alleys hung with 
airy green silk that had just been dyed and spread 
to dry, in the sun, we made our way to the mauso- 
leum of Badorgi Shah : a cloister, an arcade of 
octagonal columns carved with flowers, and in the 

court, the tombs of white stone, covered with in- 

63 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

scriptions, that look like arabesques. There are 
some children's tombs, too, quite small, in finer 
and even whiter stone, and two tiny stones under 
which lie Badorgi's parrot and cat. 



PALITANA 

The carriage of the Eajah of Palitana awaited 
us this morning at Songad. As an escort two 
sowars in long blue cloaks and red turbans, their 
guns slung behind them, galloped by our vehicle. 
On each side of the road lay fields of scorched 
grass, quite burnt and very fine, glistening like 
silk, reflecting the sun as far as we could see. 

In the middle of a large garden outside the town 
was the visitors' bungalow, the divan, where the 
prince's prime minister received us, and made us 
welcome on behalf of his master. Hardly were we 
seated when in came the Eajah, driving two wonder- 
ful horses drawing a phaeton. Dressed in a long 
black coat over very narrow trousers of white 
muslin, Gohel Sheri Man Sinjhi wore a turban, 
slightly tilted from the left side, and made of 

hundreds of fine pale green cords rolled round 

64 



PALITANA 

and round. The Prince of Morvi, and another 
of the Eajah's cousins, followed in perfectly 
appointed carriages, drawn by thoroughbreds. 
Last of all, carried by an attendant from her 
landau to the large reception-room where we sat 
gravely in a circle, came a little princess of seven 
years old, the Eajah's daughter. Enormous black 
eyes with dark blue lights, her tawny skin a foil 
to her jewels, and the gold and silver embroidery 
of a little violet velvet coat open over a long tunic 
of green silk, trousers of pink satin, and yellow 
leather slippers. A plum-coloured cap, worked 
with gold trefoils, was set very straight on her 
black hair ; she wore, in her ears, slender rings of 
gold filigree, and had a nose-stud of a fine pearl 
set in gold. She stood between her father's knees, 
squeezing close up to him with downcast eyes, 
never daring to stir but when we seemed to be 
paying no heed to her. 

At the end of a quarter of an hour the princes 
drove off through a great cloud of white dust 
sparkling in the sun, and raised by the carriages 
and the escort of armed sowars. 

In the afternoon the Minister came to take us to 

the palace. The Eajah, with his cousins, met us at the 
F 65 






Ei^CHANTED INDIA 

foot of the grand staircase ; a detachment of sowars 
were on guard. With great ceremony, preceded 
and followed by an army of officials and attendants, 
we went up to a room where a silver throne, inlaid 
with gold, of exquisite workmanship, between two 
armchairs of massive silver, looked quite out of keep- 
ing with gilt wood chairs with tapestry seats, and 
the everlasting Brussels carpet of poor and glaring 
design. On the various tables was the latest 
trumpery from Oxford Street — plush frames and 
varnished wooden screens ; a shower of glass lustres 
hung from the ceiling. 

Three musicians in white, with red turbans, 
squatted down on the ground in front of us. 
One sang to the accompaniment of a viol with 
three strings and nine frets, and a darboukha; a 
drawling strain, all on the upper notes, and rising 
higher to a shrill monotonous wail, retarded, as 
it were, to a rhythm against the accompaniment; 
then by degrees more lively, faster and faster, 
ending with a sudden stop on a word of guttural 
consonants. But the man began again ; he sang 
for a long time, varying the tunes, always return- 
ing to the first. But nothing of them remains 
in my mind, not even the rhythm, only a vague 

recollection, a singular echo, confused but charm- 

66 



PALITANA 

ing, in spite of the weirdness of the too high 
pitch. 

Then two children, their pretty, fresh voices in 
unison, sang some womanly songs, languishing 
ballads, swinging to a very indefinite rhythm, and 
suggestive of slow dances and waving gauze scarves 
in flowery gardens under the moonlight. 

With tea a servant brought packets of betel 
in a chased gold box, with a lid imitating a lotus 
flower. Then, when everybody was served, he 
carefully replaced the precious object in an em- 
broidered silk bag and disappeared. 

The little princess had made her way between 
the seats, close up to us ; she was wrapped in 
dark-coloured gauze, with woven gold borders, so 
light ! scarcely less light than the diaphanous 
material of the dress. And as I admired this 
w^onderful silk, the Eajah had some bayaderes' 
dresses brought out for me to see: twelve or 
fifteen skirts, one above another, pleated and 
spangled with gold, yet, hanging to one finger, 
scarcely the weight of a straw. 

In a coach-house, through which we passed on 
our way to see the prince's favourite horses with 
the state carriages — quite commonplace and com- 
fortable, and made at Palitana — was a chigram^ 

67 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

off which its silk cover was lifted; it was 
painted bright red and spangled with twinkling 
copper nails. This carriage, which is hermetically 
closed when the Kanee goes out in it, was lined 
with cloth -of -gold patterned with Gohel Sheri's 
initials within a horseshoe : a little hand-glass 
on one of the cushions, two boxes of chased silver, 
the curtains and hangings redolent of otto of 
roses. 

A carriage with four horses, and servants in dark 
green livery thickly braided with silver, and gold 
turbans with three raised corners very like the 
cocked hats of the French Guards, were standing 
in the Court of Honour. The little princess took a 
seat between her father and me. To drive out 
she had put on an incredible necklace with bosses 
of diamonds and heavy emerald pendants. With 
her talismans round her neck in little gold boxes, 
with this necklace of light, and rings of precious 
stones in her ears, she looked like a too exquisite 
idol, motionless and silent. It was not till we were 
returning and the falling night hid her glittering 
jewels that she chirped a few words, and consented 
to give me her hand, and even sang a few crystal 
notes of a favourite song. A little princess of 
seven years who can already read and write, sew 

68 



PALITANA 

and embroider, sing in time, and dance as lightly, 
I should fancy, as a butterfly with her tiny feet, 
that fidget in her gold slippers when she hears the 
music — though, frightened lest the Eajah should 
make her dance before me, she denied it altogether 
— a little princess, an only child, whom her father 
takes with him everywhere that she may see some- 
thing of the world before she is eleven years old, for 
after that she will never leave her mother's zenana 
but to marry and be shut up in another harem. 

On the road the people bowed low as we passed, 
almost to the earth. The women, in token of 
respect, turned their backs and crouched down. 

In the prince's stables were a long row of brood 
mares and superb stallions ; and then a hundred 
or so of colts were turned out into the yard — 
mischievous, frisking things, romping against each 
other, suddenly stopping short, and wrapped ere 
long in white dust, which fell on us, too. 

The Prince of Morvi came before sunrise to take 

us to the temples of Satrunji. On the way we 

outstripped carts packed full of women and children 

in light shimmering muslins. They were all making 

a pilgrimage to the sacred hill, singing shrill chants 

in time to the jolting of their springless vehicles, 

69 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

and broken by oaths and imprecations at the stop- 
pages occasioned by our expedition. 

The holy hill, bristling at top with the conical 
roofs of the pagodas, rises isolated in the vast 
stretch of silky grass, enclosed by a distant fringe 
of pale violet heights. At the foot of the ascent — 
in some places an incline, and in others a flight of 
steps going straight up to the temples— bearers 
were waiting for us, and an armed escort. A mob 
of pilgrims were shouting at the top of their voices, 
and did not cease their squabbling till we began 
the climb in our most uncomfortable palankins, 
etiquette forbidding us, alas ! to get out of them. 
One of my bearers, almost naked, with a mere rag 
of white cotton stuff round his hips, had hanging 
from his left ear a ring with three pearls as large 
as peas and of luminous sheen. 

Stations for prayer stand all along the road; 
little open shrines, where footprints are worshipped, 
stamped on flags of white marble, a large foot- 
print surrounded by a dozen of a child's foot. 

In front of us were men loaded with bundles or 

with children ; old women gasping as they leaned on 

long staves; chattering women with green or pink 

or white veils, then* arms full of sheaves of flowers. 

By each little temple — between which there are 

70 



PALITANA 

kiosks, sheltering innumerable grinning idols — 
trees grow, and under their shade the pilgrims 
break the- climb with a short rest. In a palankin, 
carried by two men, a slim woman's figure was 
borne past, in a pink gauze dress spangled with 
silver ; her feet and hands, beringed with silver and 
gold, were exquisitely delicate. For an instant her 
veil blew aside, showing her face, rigid with horrible 
white leprosy, only her almond-shaped black eyes 
— beautiful eyes — were alive with intense brilliancy, 
full of unfathomable woe. 

In front of a statue of Kali with a hundred 
arms, surrounded by rough votive offerings carved 
in wood, most of them representing legs, a man was 
pouring out rice, and a whole flight of grey leilas 
— birds like magpies — almost settled on his hands: 
birds of the temple, so familiar that one even 
allowed me to catch it, and did not fly away at 
once when I set it at liberty. There are rows of 
black Buddhas, white Buddhas, Sivas painted red — 
terrible — straddling in fighting attitudes; pilgrims 
without end bow and pray in front of each idol. 

"We reached the top of the hill, the sacred 

enclosure of the Jain temples. A stoppage again 

and a fresh dispute. The priests would not admit 

within the temples our soldiers, who wore shoes, 

71 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

belts, and gun -straps made of the skins of dead 
beasts. The sowars wanted to go on, declaring that 
they would take no orders from " such men, priests 
with dyed beards, dressed in red flannel, with their 
turbans undone and heated with rage." 

The heavy door, plated with iron, was shut. 
Hubbub, shouts, thumps on the wood with gun- 
stocks — nothing stirred, no reply. 

I proposed to go in without the soldiers. Im- 
possible, it was not etiquette ! I was the Kajah's 
guest. The Prince of Morvi and I could not mingle 
with the crowd, our escort was necessary to isolate 
us. Well, then, the soldiers must take off their 
shoes, and leave their belts and guns at the door ! 
Again impossible. Where would the prestige of 
the uniform be ? 

My friend T , long a resident in India, and 

quite unmoved by the habitual turmoil of the 
native Hindoos, finally settled the difficulty between 
the cabbage of the priests and the soldiers' goat; 
the men would put on hemp-shoes, and we also, 
over our leather boots; as to the belt and gun- 
slings, as they only touched the soldiers themselves, 
they could defile nothing and might be allowed 
to pass. 

So at last the door was opened. 

72 



PALITANA 

On the very summit of the hill, all over the 
ravine which divided it from another, and which 
has been filled up at an enormous cost, and then 
on the top of that other hill beyond, temples are 
piled up, shining against the too-blue sky, with 
pointed roofs of stone, scorched by the sun or 
stained by the rain, and patterned with pale-hued 
lichens. Above each a spear stands up, impaling 
a metal ball. In infinite variety, differing in 
materials, style, and proportions, some quite small, 
as if they had sprouted round the base of others 
that are gigantic, there are here five thousand 
temples built by the faithful, who are incessantly 
erecting more, devoting great fortunes to the vanity 
of leaving a chapel that bears their name. 

Spread before us in the iridescent atmosphere, 
the view extends over Palitana under its blue veil 
of light smoke, over the verdant plain chequered 
with plots of brown earth, and the winding ribbon 
of the Satrunji, a river as sacred to the Jains as 
the Ganges is to the Brahmins. And far away, 
vague in the distance, a light shimmering more 
brightly where all is bright, lies the luminou 
breadth of the sea. 

Just within the enclosure to our right is a tomb. 

A Mohammedan who came forth to take the sacred 

73 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

hill, the brother of an emperor of Delhi, fell dead 
at the foot of a Jain idol, which he had dared to 
touch with his staff. How the legend developed 
it is impossible to say; but this warrior, buried on 
the spot where he was stricken down by the 
divinity, has the miraculous power of curing 
barrenness in the women who invoke him. Votive 
offerings, little cradles daubed with yellow and 
red, are heaped on the pavement and hang to the 
railing. 

A wide avenue paved with marble, rising in 
broad steps, crosses the hilltop between temples 
on either side, intersecting narrower alleys, like- 
wise bordered with pagodas crowded together in 
the inextricable mazes of a labyrinth, whence our 
guides were frequently required to lead us out — 
temples crowned with a cupola or a cone, a 
bristling throng of little extinguishers all covered 
with carving. The same subjects and patterns 
are repeated to infinity, even in the darkest nooks : 
figures of gods, of gigantic beasts rearing or gallop- 
ing, of monstrous horses and elephants, of tiny 
birds sheltering the slumbers of the gods under 
their outspread wings. 

On the stone ceiling of almost every temple 

four large women's faces and certain crouching 

74 



PALITANA 

gnomes appear in fresh red paint. In the very 
dim twilight that comes in through the narrow 
windows hung with blue gauze, the idols are visible 
behind lattices : white Buddhas blazing with 
sparkling gems that hang on their wrists and 
ankles, or form a perfect breastplate ; and every 
one. without exception, has an enormous glittering 
imitation diamond in his forehead. 

In the shrine of Chaumuc, the god of many 
faces, the four masks grin down from the sides 
of a square pillar of white stucco. The walls, 
vault, and pavement of this temple are all red, 
with borders of green and yellow; the colours 
scream in contrast to the whiteness of the images, 
with their staring eyes made of crystal balls that 
look like spectacles. 

Another sanctuary holds an idol made of seven 
metals mingled to a pale golden hue. The statue 
is loaded with jewellery of silver and precious 
stones. On its head is a fan-shaped diadem starred 
with rubies. The walls and columns, of a dull 
purple, are decorated with gaudy mosaic of scraps 
of looking-glass set in brass along the lines of 
the mouldings. 

Pilgrims crowd the courts and the temples. All, 

when they speak, hold a hand or a corner of their 

75 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

robe before their lips to avoid swallowing the 
tiniest insect, which would avert the favour of 
the gods. They bring offerings of rice or gram 
in little bags of faded silk, pale pink, or green, 
and gold thread ; the poorest have bags of red 
and white beads. 

A very large temple, with its walls pierced 
in Persian patterns, contains fifty - two chapels 
behind pointed arches. In each chapel are four 
gods, all alike, of white plaster, all decked with 
the same jewels. In an angle of the vaulting 
a female figure, carved in the stone and wearing 
a tiara, holds an infant in her arms ; this statue, 
with its long face and the rigid folds of the drapery, 
might have been transferred here from a gothic 
building. 

A bulbul, flying out of a temple where it had 
been picking up the offered rice, perched on a pome- 
granate tree and began to sing, at first a little timid 
chirp, and then a ripple of song, soon drowned by 
the shrieks of parrots, which came down on the 
tree and drove out the little red-breasted chorister. 

At the very top of the incline, the enclosing wall, 

black with age but bright with yellow velvet moss, 

rises precipitously above the plain, and three light 

balconies, with columns as slight as flower-stems, 

76 



PALITANA 

crowned with pointed roofs recurved at the angles, 
overhang the abyss. 

More and yet more temples, seen through the 
mist of weariness, the nightmare of grimacing idols, 
the heavy vapour of the incense burnt in every 
chapel, and of the flowers brought by the pilgrims. 
A dark red pagoda, lighted by a mysterious blue 
gleam falling intermittently from somewhere in the 
roof, enshrined a white marble god, whose glittering 
gems seemed to rise and fall behind the cloud of 
perfume that floated about him. 

In another place two elephants of bright indigo, 
and some musicians all green, with red parrots on 
their wrists, are painted on the walls of a hall where 
the prayer-bell is incessantly tolled. Here many 
worshippers were prostrate. An idol, flanked by 
two statues on guard in stiff hieratic attitudes, was 
almost hidden under gold chains and a crown of in- 
ordinate splendour, while a priest, wearing only a 
loin-cloth, stood calmly sluicing the white plaster 
and putting the god through his toilet, sometimes 
splashing the congregation. 

There is a very small and simple niche against 
the wall of a larger building, and in this, without 
even a railing to protect it, stands the image of a 
goddess robed in silk embroidered in gold; and in 

77 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

such another little recess, not far away, is the sister 
of this divinity, also dressed in magnificent stuffs, 
renewed by the faithful at each high festival. 

In a consecrated hall we came to a plaster image 
of a camel modelled over stone. To prove that you 
are without sin you must be able to pass under the 
beast, or at least' between the front legs and the 
girth of the belly without touching any part ; and so 
very narrow is this little gateway of Jain virtue 
that, to preserve my character in the presence of my 
escort, I did not attempt it. 

Another temple — carved and pierced, and loaded 
and overloaded with ornament. In the crypt was a 
bas-relief representing the ceremony of marriage: 
the procession, the couple in front of the altar, the 
relations sitting round, all alike in the same crouch- 
ing attitude, like toys set out by a little child. Then 
the model of a very famous temple elsewhere in 
India: columns, gateways, statues of the gods, all 
reproduced with microscopic exactitude down to the 
minutest details ; and surrounding this tiny model a 
bas-relief of the most bewildering perspective — a 
plan of Satrunji with its fifty-two principal temples, 
its trees and sacred tanks ; and as a pendant to this 
representation, a circular carving giving a bird's-eye 

view of the crowd, the same little doll-like figures 

78 



PALITANA 

repeated again and again, coming to worship with 
arms and legs spread out, grovelling, as if they were 
swimming. 

A large open niche, supported on massive columns 
and euclosed by a carved parapet, built by some 
king with a long, high-sounding name, looks as if it 
were made of gold ; the stone is yellow and flooded 
with sunshine, which, where the hard material is not 
too thick, shines through and makes it seem trans- 
parent, with the peculiar vibrant glow of molten 
metal. The shadows, blue by contrast, are as soft 
as velvet ; twinkling sparks are lighted up in the 
angles of the architrave, by the reflected rays, like 
stars in the stone itself. 

On a square, shaded by an awning, with porticoes 
all round, coolies in white dresses sat on the ground 
making up little bunches of flowers, the blossoms 
without stems tied close to a pliant cane for garlands 
— -jasmine, roses, chrysanthemums, and sweet basil — 
for in India, as in Byzantium of old, basil is the 
flower of kings and gods. The basil's fresh scent 
overpowered the smell of sandal-wood and incense 
which had gradually soaked into me in the presence 
of the idols, and cleared the atmosphere delight- 
fully. A woman rolled up in pale-tinted muslins 

under the warm halo of light falling through the 

79 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

awning, was helping one of the florists. She 
supported on her arm a long garland of jasmine 
alternating with balls of roses. Almost motionless, 
she alone, in the midst of the idols, at all reminded 
me of a goddess. 

In the chief temple, whose walls were painted all 
over, a huge Buddha of gold and silver was hidden 
under wreaths of flowers round his neck, and a 
diadem of flowers on his brow, where blazed a 
luminous diamond ; and flowers were arranged in a 
canopy over his head, and were strewn like a carpet 
on the steps of the shrine. 

The fourteen hundred and fifty-two gods of the 
Jain paradise are represented on a sculptured 
pyramid under a pagoda: little tadpoles of white 
stone crowded together, two black dots showing for 
eyes in the middle of the round featureless faces; 
on one side a more important god, sitting alone, has 
a rather less elementary countenance. 

A very solid structure, with walls like a fortress, 

contains the treasury of the sacred mount. Five 

guards in turn came to open as many padlocks, and 

at last the ponderous door turned slowly on its 

hinges. A car, an elephant, and a vehicle to which 

are harnessed two prancing horses, are all brought 

out to convey the idols when they go forth in a 

80 



PALITANA 

procession. The animals are chased with almost 
artistic skill. The harness, starry with precious 
stones, all takes to pieces. 

Near one pagoda, where the highly venerated 
footprints of Adishwara are preserved, a tree — a 
gran tree — was cut down to the root, and, as the 
legend tells, grew again in a single night as large as 
it now is ; and it would grow again if it were again 
felled, to screen with its shade the holy spot touched 
by the god. 

Beyond the outermost wall, when we had at last 
left it behind us, at the foot of the pile of terra- 
cotta-coloured bricks, were vast tanks of stagnant 
water, said to be inexhaustible. Near them was a 
shrine to Siva, with two small idols hung with 
yellow flowers, where an old Hindoo was praying 
devoutly; and then through a park of giant trees, 
and shrubs bright with strange blossoms, over which 
the parrots flew screaming. 

As soon as we returned to Palitana the Eajah 

sent to inquire after me, and to present me with 

round boxes of fruit preserved in Cashmere, oval 

green grapes, each wrapped separately in cotton and 

smelling of honey. 

One of my sepoys was lying asleep in the veran- 
G 81 



E:^CHANTED INDIA 

dah of the bungalow. A variety of articles hung 
from his belt: an antelope's horn made into a powder- 
flask, several tassels of red and green silk threaded 
in a row, a triple chain of copper serving to hang up 
lamps in front of the sacred images, a small damas- 
cened knife in a crimson velvet sheath, and a tiny 
yellow earthenware bottle containing kohl. 

In the courtyard a tall and gaudy cock was keep- 
ing the crows in order, driving them relentlessly 
away from the kitchen precincts. On the roof of 
the servants' quarters, always in the same spot, 
perched a kite, ready to pounce as soon as any- 
thing was thrown out. The doves, the house- 
pigeons, the fowls fled at once and squatted in 
corners ; but the cock stood his ground, his feathers 
all on end, his crest erect, chuckling with rage and 
stalking round the yard within ten paces of the 
bird of prey. 

In the afternoon the Eajah wore a pale green 

dress embroidered with gold and gems, and sparkling 

with stones, and a wide rose-coloured sash fringed 

with pearls. He wore no jewels but priceless 

diamond buckles in his shoes. As I had lingered 

long in the morning at a jeweller's shop, the prince 

wished to show me his possessions. Servants, as 

solemn as gaolers, brought in many trays covered 

82 



PALITANA 

with enormous emeralds cut into beads and strung 
on white cords, necklaces of pear-shaped pearls 
threaded on almost invisible silk. And then, from 
among the goldsmith's work, modelled into im- 
possible flowers and chimeras twisted to make 
heavy anklets, from among coat - buttons, rings 
and sword-guards sparkling with diamonds, the 
Eajah took up a costly snuff-box and begged me 
keep it as a remembrance. 

The elephant of ceremony, covered with a velvet 
cloth embroidered with gold, on which was placed a 
massive silver howdah edged with gold, was in wait- 
ing to take me for a ride. Eound the beast's neck 
hung a huge necklace of balls as large as apples and 
long pendants from his ears, all of silver, tinkling 
as he moved and glittering in the sun. The mahout 
rested a ladder against the elephant's head for me 
to mount by, and we set out, following the Eajah 
and escorted by sowars, to the very modern tennis 
club of Palitana. 

The game had begun. The prince's cousins, dressed 
in light white muslin, seemed to fly as they ran after 
the ball in the fluttering of the diaphanous stuff. 

The guards' band played Indian tunes, to a measure 

I could not yet catch, and Strauss' waltzes very 

oddly accented. Suddenly the princess appeared, 

83 



EIS'CHANTED INDIA 

in soft rose-pink lightly touched with blue. She 
wore a pearl necklace with slides of ruby and 
emerald, shoes thickly worked with gold, and a 
broad pink sash somewhat darker in colour than 
her silver-striped tunic. 

Evening fell, purple and orange tinging the 
princes' muslins to delicate hues ; then very q uickly 
all was dark. Deep melancholy came over us ; we 
all sat without speaking a word, while from afar 
came the clatter of tom-toms from the temple, some- 
times drowning the music, which droned on in a 
minor key, a maundering strain without a close but 
constantly repeating itself. 

The Eajah, a prisoner in his little state, a ruler 
only in name and deposed from his power, as I rose 
to take my leave, cast a glance of deep melancholy 
towards a last golden beam that quivered on the 
sacred hill, and seemed to awake from a dream. 



BHAWNAGAR 

The little palace of Nilam Bagh, panelled inside 
throughout with carved wood, looks like a jewel- 
casket dropped in a vast park of green shade and 

84 



BHAWNAGAR 

broad lawns. Rawl Shri Bhaosinhji, Eajah of 
Bhawnagar, is very young, almost a child, and 
still very shy, dressed in the European fashion 
in a long grey overcoat, with a voluminous turban 
of turquoise-blue gauze. 

As soon as he had bid us welcome, bunches of 
chrysanthemums were presented to us tied round 
a little stick. The Eajah hung garlands of jasmine 
round our neck, and a servant sprinkled us with otto 
of roses. The conversation turned on Europe, which 
Eawl Shri regards as a land of marvels, where fairy- 
like manufactures are produced and extraordinary 
forces have subjugated nature. He, like his cousin 
of Palitana, has a passion for horses, and he took 
me to visit his stud. 

On the edge of a pool, where, like a huge, full- 
blown lotus flower, stands a kiosk of sculptured 
marble, dedicated to the Eajah's mother, we came 
upon the shoe market, the last survival of a time 
not so very long ago, when shoemakers, as working 
on the skins of dead beasts, dared not come within 
the precincts of a town. 

It was a miserable assemblage of booths and 
tumble-down dwellings, crowded round a sumptuous 
old palace with porticoes carved with divinities. The 

new town consists of modern buildings, devoid of 

86 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

style, the residence of wealthy Parsee merchants. 
Here are libraries, archives — all kinds of offices, 
which seem so useless here, and which, till I was 
told what they were, I took to be a prison. 

A long train of wailing women, loud in lamenta- 
tion, came slowly out of a house where one lay dead 
whom they had just been to look at, on their way 
now to wash their garments, defiled by contact with 
the body. But all dressed in red, with gaudy 
embroidery in yellow, white, and green, and large 
spangles of looking-glass glittering in the sun, they 
did not look much like mourners. 

Eeally the prison this time ! in the midst of a 
large enclosure with high walls ; a building on a 
star-shaped plan, with large windows to admit air 
and daylight. The prisoners, in a white uniform, 
with chains on their feet, were manufacturing 
various articles in basket-work, and in a shed with 
a cotton awning a hundred or so of convicts were 
weaving carpets. The brilliancy of colour was in- 
describable ; the vividness of the medley of worsted 
piled by the side of the gorgeous looms, the light 
hues of the dresses, the faded turbans touched with 
light, the glitter of the steel chains, the bronze 
skins, glorified to gold in the quivering sunshine, 

which, scarcely subdued by the awning, bathed the 

86 



BHAWIN[AGAR 

scene in a glow so intense that it seemed to proceed 
from the objects themselves. Behind each loom sat 
a warder, with the pattern of the carpet on his knees, 
dictating the colours to the weavers, chanting out 
his weariful litany of numbers and shades in a 
monotonous voice. 

A poor old fellow, behind a grating that shut him 
into a kind of hovel, called out to us, first beseeching 
and then threatening, rushing frantically to the 
back of his hut and at once coming forward again 
with fresh abuse. He was a dangerous madman, 
placed there to keep him out of mischief and to be 
cured by the Divinity. 

In the bazaar I sought in vain for the petticoats 
embroidered with rosettes, flowers, and elephants pur- 
sued by tigers, such as the women wear here ; these 
robes are made only to order and are not to be found. 
Then Abibulla simply asked a beggar-woman to sell 
me hers. The poor creature, hooted at by some 
old gossips, retired into a corner to undress, and, 
wrapped in the packing-cloth in which she had been 
carrying some rags, brought me the petticoat. 

A tame white antelope was wandering about the 

garden of the old rajahs' palace, under a shower 

of gardenia - like flowers that hung by a stem 

87 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

scarcely thicker than a thread. The whole of one 
avenue was strewn with this snow, on which the 
graceful little beast, with its large sad eyes, was 
feeding. Further on, under some other trees with 
red blossoms, stands a little mausoleum built by the 
prince over Jacky, his dog, '*who was faithful and 
good." 

Some native lancers were manoeuvring; they 
charged at top speed in a swirl of golden dust, 
which transfigured their movements, making them 
look as though they did not touch the earth, but 
were riding on the clouds. They swept lightly past, 
almost diaphanous, the colour of their yellow khaki 
uniforms mingling with the ochre sand; and then, 
not ten yards off, they stopped short, with astonish- 
ing precision, like an apparition. Their lances 
quivered for an instant, a flash of steel sparks 
against the sky — a salute to the Maharajah — and 
then they were as motionless as statues. 

The regiment is housed under sheds, the horses 
picketed to the ground by one fore and one hind 
foot. They are thoroughbred and magnificent 
beasts, almost all from the prince's stud, and 
affectionately cared for by the men, who were 
delighted to be complimented on their steeds. 



88 



BHAWNAGAR 

A New Year's dinner this evening at the Guest 
Bungalow. The prince, forbidden by his religion 
to eat with men who are not of his own caste, was 

represented by Mr. S , the English engineer at 

Bhawnagar. 

The long table was filled with officials and their 
wives, as happy as children — pulling crackers at 
dessert, putting on paper caps, singing the latest 
music-hall nonsense ; while outside, jackals whined, 
suddenly coming so close that they drowned the 
voices and the accompaniment on the piano. 

At the railway station a woman, who would 
accept no gratuity, strewed flowers on the cushions 
of my carriage, and put garlands along the grooves 
of the open windows — bunches of ebony flowers, of 
Indian cork-flowers, lilies, and China roses on the 
point of dropping, only hanging to the calyx by 
the tip of the petals. 

In the distance, across the plain, herds of deer 
were feeding, and hardly looked up as the train 
went by. 

At a station where we stopped, a man with a 
broad, jolly, smiling face got into the carriage. He 
was a juggler and a magician, could do whatever he 
would, and at the time when the line was opened 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

he threatened that if he were not allowed to travel 
free he would break the trains into splinters. The 
officials had a panic, and the authorities were so 
nervous that they gave way ; so he is always 
travelling from one station to another, living in 
the carriages. 

He came into ours as if he were at home, and 
amused himself by worrying me. At first he made 
believe to throw my rings out of window, sub- 
stituting others, I know not how, which I saw fall 
on the line and roll into the grass on the bank. 
My watch got into his hands and vanished ; I found 

it in my friend T 's pocket, and afterwards in a 

basket of provender closed at Bhawnagar, and which 
I unpacked with my own hands. 

The man was dressed in blue and silver, his belt 
studded with four - anna pieces ; hanging to his 
girdle was a whole array of small knives, sheaths, 
and boxes. With his sleeves turned up to his 
elbows, he fairly amazed me, conjuring away into 
the air eight rupees that filled his hand, and find- 
ing them again one by one in our pockets, bags, 
or plaids. He turned everything topsy-turvy, 
swaggered as if he were the master, and then 
went off, with his broad smile, to amuse other 

travellers. 

90 



BOMBAY 

At another station, a man, standing on the carriage 
step, held out a broad sheet to a servant, the two 
ends falling to the ground. Then a lady stepped 
out, hid herself under the stuff, which wrapped her 
from head to foot, and walked along the platform 
with a woman-servant. She was the wife of some 
superior clerk, not rich enough to have a palankin, 
but of too high caste to uncover her face — a white 
bundle tottering along the platform. One of her 
antelope-skin slippers came off; for a second a tiny 
foot was put out with silver anklets. The woman 
put her mistress's shoe on again, and then both went 
to the waiting-room reserved for ladies. 



BOMBAY 

A town in mourning. In the suburban stations, 
so crowded but three weeks since, there was no- 
body, and nobody in the train we travelled by. 
No coolies for the baggage, no carriages, and the 
tramcars running down the wide, deserted road 
carried no passengers. The hotel was closed, all 
the servants had fled in terror of the plague, which 

was raging with increased violence. Every shop 

91 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

had the shutters up; the great market, full of golden 
fruit and shaded by the flowering trees, was equally 
empty, and in the bazaar the rare wayfarers hurried 
by in silence. 

In the evening at BycuUa, in the street of the 
disreputable, in front of a house hermetically closed, 
and painted with a round red spot for each person 
who had died there, a fire of sulphur was burning 
with a livid glow. Only one gambling-house tried 
to tempt customers with a great noise of harmonium 
and tom-toms ; and from a side street came a 
response of muffled tambourines and castanets. 
First the dead, wrapped in red stuff and tied to a 
bamboo, and then the procession turned into the 
lighted street. White shapes crowded by, vanish- 
ing at once, and the harmonium again rose above 
the silence with its skipping tunes, and the tom- 
toms beating out of time — and attracted no one. 



HYDERABAD 

At night, in the crowded station, a guard of 

honour was waiting, composed of sepoys. There 

was shouting among the crowd, a fanatical turmoil, 

a storm of orders, and heavy blows. Some great 

92 



HYDERABAD 

magnate got out of the train, surrounded by 
secretaries and officers. The soldiers, bearing 
torches, attended him to his carriage; they re- 
mounted their horses, following the vehicle, in 
which a light dress was visible. Very fast, and 
with a great clatter, they rode away into the silent 
night fragrant with rich scents ; they were lost 
under the trees to reappear in the distance on a 
height, the torches galloping still and the smoke 
hanging in a ruddy cloud above the bright steel 
and the white cruppers. Then, at a turn in the 
road, they all vanished. 

Beyond the new town of broad avenues planted 
with trees and bordered with gardens, was a brand- 
new bridge of gaudy bricks over a river, almost dry, 
where a swarm of naked natives were performing 
their ablutions — washing linen and shaking out red 
and white cloths, as far as the eye could see. 
Buffaloes lying in the mud were sleeping among 
the tame ducks, the ibis, and the herons, all seeking 
their food. An elephant plunged into the water, 
splashing it up and scaring thousands of bright 
birds, which flew up against the intensely blue sky. 

A tall wide gate beyond the bridge opens into the 

ferocious fortress of Hyderabad. 

93 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Soldiers, bristling with daggers and pistols in their 
belts, are on guard at the gate. Pikes and long 
muskets stand piled in the background; over this 
arsenal, flowering jasmine and convolvulus with 
enormous bell flowers hang their graceful shade. 

In the streets, swarming with people, every woman 
who is not a pariah, walks veiled in all the mystery 
of her unrevealed features, her long, dreamy eyes 
alone visible. 

Country folks bring in cages of birds full of the 
poor little fluttering things, which are bought by 
children and by many men, captive at the end of 
a long string ; pretty black-headed bulbuls, so bold 
in the land of the Buddhists, and victims here to the 
Moslems. 

A palankin, hung with heavy red curtains, went 
by very quickly, borne by five men. They chanted 
a sort of double-quick march, marking the time with 
a plaintive sigh and a slight bend of the knees, which 
gave their pace the appearance of a dance, the litter 
swaying very gently. 

A spell seemed to linger over this little bazaar, 

to slacken every movement and give the people an 

indolent grace. They spoke languidly in the shade 

of the awnings spread by the flower-sellers and the 

jewellers, who, with little ringing taps, were ham- 

94 



HYDEKABAD 

mering out minute patterns on silver anklets and 
necklaces. 

Traversing the narrow avenues that intersect the 
bazaar, we came to a series of quiet courts; here 
were the police-station, the small barracks, and 
stables for camels and elephants. In a blind alley 
we found a white mosque, where men were praying 
robed in pink and green; while opposite, below a 
house consisting of three stories of arcades, some 
Syrian horses, as slender as gazelles, were exercis- 
ing on the bright-hued mosaic floor of the open 
stable. 

Between the houses tiny garden-plots full of 
flowers surround gravestones, on which fresh roses 
are constantly laid. 

Elephants came along, stepping daintily, but filling 
the whole width of the street, looking, with one 
little slanting eye cocked, as if they were laughing 
at the foot-passengers who were compelled to 
squeeze against the wall. 

Presently three beggar-women came up to sing 

from door to door. In their arms, like babies at 

the breast, they carried shapeless idols painted red, 

bedizened with spangles and gilt paper. They wailed 

out a ditty repeated again and again, knocked 

perseveringly at the doors, insisting on alms; and 

95 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

then, when they had received it, they touched the 
threshold with their blood-coloured puppets and 
departed. 

In the shops the salesmen, to weigh their mer- 
chandise, had a strange collection of curious weights 
— dumps, rings, balls of copper, iron, or lead, 
stamped or inlaid with symbols and flowers; frag- 
ments of spoons to make up too light a weight, 
even pieces of wood; and they used them all with 
perfect readiness and never made a mistake. 

Where the roads cross there are basins where 
flowers are kept fresh, and above them white pigeons 
are always fluttering. Public scribes, squatting 
cross-legged on the ground, trace letters that look 
like arabesques, on rice-paper, with a reed pen. 
Those who dictate them crouch beside them with 
an absorbed and meditative expression, dropping 
out the words one by one with long pauses between. 

Then some men go past who have a stick like a 
distaff thrust through their belt with a net wound 
round it ; they net as they walk, heedless of jostling, 
their eyes fixed on their work. 

In the distance is the great mosque which no 

unbeliever may enter; the doors stand wide open. 

The only ornaments on the white walls are the 

lamps, hung with red. In the court of the mosque, 

96 



HYDERABAD 

under magnificent trees, are the tombs of the 
Nizams, with stone lattices, jewellery of marble, 
fragile pierced work, whereon wreaths of pale 
flowers are wrought with infinite grace. Near 
these tombs are two large fountains, where a crowd 
of men were bathing, talking very loud ; and a large 
basin of porphyry full of grain was besieged by 
grey pigeons. 

All round the mosque, in narrow alleys, are more 
and yet more tombs, strewn with roses and enclosed 
in little plots. Some stand out in the street un- 
enclosed, like milestones. 

There was a children's garden-party to-day in the 
grounds of the English Eesident ; a crowd of fair- 
haired babies, excessively Greenaway in their long, 
light frocks with bright-hued sashes. They shouted 
with joy at the swings and wooden horses, clapping 
their hands when it came to their turn to ride the 
elephant that marched about the park — so fair, so 
bright, with their nurses or Indian ayahs wrapped 
in crude showy muslins. 

And as they went home at nightfall enormous 

bats came out and flew across above the tall trees 

in heavy, steady, straight flight. Without a sound 

they made for the last gleam on the horizon, where 

H 97 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the vanished sun had left a crimson line ; and what 
an insistent image of death and oblivion were those 
great black fowl, slowly flapping their five-fingered 
wings spread out round their bodies, headless as 
they would seem, so small is the head, and so close- 
set on the neck. One might fancy that they were 
bearing away the day, gliding noiseless and innu- 
merable towards the west, where already the last 
gleam is dead. 

Outside the fortifications is a peaceful township 
of large gardens with row on row of tombstones and 
mausoleums ; some of enormous size, palaces of the 
dead, and others smaller, but wrought like lace- 
work of stone. For a league or more the necropolis 
lies on both sides of the road. Across the door of 
each mausoleum hangs a chain by the middle and 
the two ends. 

But this suburb is now no more than a heap 
of huts and hovels. The tombs, ruined and over- 
thrown, are few and far apart, heaped with sand, 
and showing as arid hillocks amid the level of 
withered grass. The plain beyond, laid out in rice- 
fields of a tender green, furrowed with silver 
streamlets, spreads unbroken to the foot of a huge 

wall of the hue of red gold enclosing a hill ; and on 

98 



HYDERABAD 

entering the precincts, behold, in the bays of the 
thickness of the wall, a whole village where dwell 
the families of the soldiers who guard this citadel. 

An inner fortress, another portal held by armed 
men, and a walled enclosure, is Golconda, the former 
capital of the sovereigns of the Deccan. The 
entrance is through a magnificent archway of 
gigantic proportions ; to close it there are two gates 
of heavy wood studded all over with long iron 
spikes, against which, during a siege, elephants 
charged to their death. 

All round the Royal Hill ancient buildings are 
piled in stages, the remains of still majestic magni- 
ficence. The thorn-brakes cover supporting walls 
as broad as crenellated terraces ; fragments of light 
and fantastic architecture stand up from amid 
golden blossoms; tottering colonnades overhang 
tanks, all green at the bottom with a pool of 
brackish water. 

At an angle of the stairs of violet-tinted stone, 
which lead to the summit of the hill, a tablet of 
green marble, engraved in flowing Arabic characters, 
remains uninjured, the record of the great deeds of 
some emperor of Golconda. 

At the top, facing two immense rocks that look 
like couchant lions, there was another palace; one 

LofC. 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

wall alone is left standing ; on the creamy marble a 
peacock spreads its tail, carved into very delicate 
sprays and flowers. 

The view spread to the horizon of mauve-pink 
sky, very faintly streaked with green. We could 
see the white mass of Secunderabad, a town of 
English barracks, at the foot of chaotic red-brown 
rocks, looking like the heaped-up ruins of some 
city of the Titans; and among trees shrouded in 
blue smoke, Hyderabad, conspicuous for its two 
mosques — the tomb of the Empress and the Jumna 
Musjid, the mausoleum of the Nizams. 

Further yet lay the artificial lake of Meer Alam, 
reflecting the palace of Baradari and the russet 
plain, infinite as far as the eye could reach towards 
the north, where other superb mausoleums were 
visible in their whiteness. 

At our feet were the two walls, the outer wall 
enclosing the palace, the gardens, the arena, where 
fights were given between elephants and tigers ; 
the inner wall, ten metres high, built round the 
zenana — the women's palace — of which even the 
foundations have almost disappeared under the 
overwhelming vegetation. 

Mystery broods over this ruined past ; grandeur 

seemed to rise up in the sunset glow. We went 

100 



HYDERABAD 

down the hill, while behind us a saffron haze veiled 
the Eoyal Hill, effaced every detail of architecture, 
and shed over all an amethystine halo. 

It was melancholy to return under the gloomy, 
spreading banyans, through the dimly - lighted 
suburbs, where the people were still at work and 
selling their wares ; and the dungeon, the dead 
stones, the guns now for ever silenced and pointed 
at vacancy, were lost in blue darkness. 

Our last evening at the Eesidency, where I had 
spent days made enchanting by music. 

The servant who came to tell m.e that dinner was 
served went barefoot, like all native servants, in 
spite of his livery — a sash and a shoulder-belt 
arranged over the Indian costume, and bearing the 
arms of England, and a monogram placed in his 
turban. 

He appeared without a sound, visible only as 
a white figure, his brown face lost, effaced in the 
gloom of the dimly -lighted room. For a moment 
I had a really uncanny sensation at this headless 
apparition, but in an instant there was the gleam of 
a row of brilliant teeth, the light in the eyes, and 
the eternally smiling face of the household coolie. 



101 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

On quitting Hyderabad, to the right and left of 
the iron road, the landscape was for a long way 
the same ; rocks, that looked as if they had been 
piled up and then rolled over, lay in russet heaps 
among peaceful little blue lakes without number, 
breaking the monotony of the wide, scorched fields, 
a sheet of pure gold. At one of the stations a 
beggar was rattling his castanets furiously, and 
singing something very lively and joyous. At the 
end of each verse he shouted an unexpected "Ohe !" 
just like the cry of a Paris ragamuffin. 

Here in southern India the women wear hardly 
any trinkets, and their garb consists of sarongs 
and sarees, so thin that their shape is visible 
through the light stuff. In their hair, which is 
knotted low on the neck, they stick flowers, 
and occasionally light trailing sprays fall down 
on the throat. They all have gold studs screwed 
into the two upper front teeth; hideous are these 
two red-gold teeth among the others, sound and 
white under young lips ! 

Then, on the right, endless pools and rivers; 

naked men were ploughing in the liquid mud and 

splashed all over by the oxen drawing a light 

wooden plough, their bronze bodies caked ere long 

with a carapace of dry, grey mud. 

102 



HYDERABAD 

The rice, lately sown, was sprouting in little 
square plots of dazzling green ; it was being taken 
up to transplant into enormous fields perpetually 
under water. All the ''paddy" fields are, in fact, 
channelled with watercourses, or if they are on 
higher ground, watered from a well. A long beam 
is balanced over the mouth of the well, and two 
boys run up and down to lower and raise the 
bucket ; a man tilts the water into the runlets 
out of a large vessel of dusky copper, or perhaps 
out of a leaky, dripping water-skin. 

The ripe rice, in golden ears, is cut with sickles ; 
a row of women in red gather it into sheaves, which 
men carry on their back, at once, to the next village, 
and there it is threshed out forthwith on floors but 
just swept. 

And so, on both sides of the way there are rice- 
fields without end ; those that were reaped yesterday 
are ploughed again to-day. 

As we went further south Moslem tombs became 

more and more rare; the lingam was to be seen 

here and there among the rice-fields : a gross idol 

made of stone and looking like a landmark, set 

up under a tree or sheltered by a little kiosk. 

Soon temples of Yishnu were seen, raising their 

103 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

pyramidal piles of ten stories to the sky. Amid 
the cool shade of palms and bamboos, close to each 
temple, was a fine tank with steps all round it ; and 
surrounded by this magnificence of architecture and 
vegetation Hindoos might all day be seen bathing, 
dwellers in hovels of plaster or matting, sometimes 
in mere sheds supported on sticks, within the shadow 
of the splendid building full of treasure, in which 
the god is enshrined. 

Birds, green, red, black, and gold-colour, fluttered 
gaily among the palms, the bamboos as tall as pine 
trees, the baobabs and mango trees ; butterflies with 
rigid tails and large wings beating in uncertain 
flight, floated over the bright verdure flecked with 
sunshine. Eound one pagoda, towering over a 
wretched village that lay huddled in the shade 
of its consecrated walls, a proud procession of 
stone bulls stood out against the sky, visible at a 
great distance in clear outline through the heated, 
quivering air. 

A kind of grey snipe, as they rose to fly, spread 
white wings which made them look like storks or 
gulls, and then, dropping suddenly, became dull 
specks again, scarcely distinguishable on the margin 
of the tank. Ibis, on the watch, with pretty, de- 
liberate, cautious movements, stood on one leg, 

104 



HYDERABAD 

their bodies reflected in the mirror on which lay 
the lotns and the broad, frilled leaves of the water- 
lily, and a sort of bind-weed hanging from the edge 
in festoons of small, arrow-shaped leaves, with a 
crowd of tiny pink starry flowers that looked as 
if they were embroidered on the water. 

The country was nowhere deserted. Labourers 
in the rice-fields were transplanting the young seed- 
lings or watering the taller growth that waved in 
delicate transparent verdure. Or again, there were 
the watchers perched on their platforms in the 
middle of the fields ; fishermen pushing little nets 
before them, fastened to triangular frames, or grub- 
bing in the mud in search of shell-fish — small fresh- 
water mussels, which they carried away in clay jars 
of Etruscan form. A motley crowd, with animated 
and graceful gesticulations ; the women red or white 
figures in fluttering sarees, with flowers in their hair, 
and a few glittering bangles on their arms ; the 
children quite naked, with bead necklaces and queer 
charms of lead or wood in their ears or their nose ; 
the men slender and active, wearing light- coloured 
turbans made of yards on yards of twisted muslin, 
their brown skin hidden only by the langouti or 
loin-cloth. 

Along the line were hedges of glaucous aloes, of 

105 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

gynerium all plumed with white, and over every 
plant an inextricable tangle of haja, its pink flowers 
hanging in bunches. 

Fields of betel pepper, broad-leaved and fleshy, 
carefully enclosed with matting, were watched over 
by two or even three men, armed with heavy cudgels. 

Under an enormous banyan tree, far from any 
dwelling, two fine statues of an elephant and a 
horse seemed to guard an image of Siva, rigidly 
seated, and on his knees an image of Parvati, quite 
small, and standing as though about to dance. 

Images of horses recurred at intervals, singly, or 
in pairs face to face ; and as evening came on we 
saw round a pagoda a whole procession of horses in 
terra-cotta, some very much injured, arranged as if 
they were running round, one after another, in 
search of the heads and legs they had lost. 

Near a small station oxen were filing slowly past. 
On their heads were hoops hung with bells, and 
little ornaments at the tips of their horns dangled 
with quick flashes of light. 

The evening was exquisitely calm, shrouding 

everything in rose - colour, and shedding a light, 

opalescent golden haze on the pools and streams. 

And out of this floating gauze, in the doubtful 

light, white figures seemed to emerge gradually, 

106 



TRICHINOPOLY 

only to vanish again in the pure, transparent 
atmosphere of the blue night. 

Over the rice-fields, in the darkness, danced a 
maze of fire-flies, quite tiny, but extraordinarily 
bright; they whirled in endless streaks of flame, 
intangible, so fine that they seemed part of the 
air itself, crossing in a ceaseless tangle, faster and 
faster, and then dying out in diamond sparks, very 
softly twinkling little stars turning to silver in the 
moonlight. 

Between the tracery of bamboos, behind clumps 
of cedars spreading their level plumes of tine, 
flexible needles, we still constantly saw the roofs 
of temples involved in clouds of tiny phosphor- 
escent sparks weaving their maze of light ; and the 
clang of bells and drums fell on the ear. 



TRICHINOPOLY 

High on a hill, one with the rock, are built 
the temples, up to which is a flight of steps hewn 
in the stone itself. At every stage, or nearly, are 
little shrines with images of Ganesa, the elephant- 
headed god, or of Ananta, the sacred serpent, 

decked with flowers, the mindi flower, which has 

107 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

a strong scent of pepper. In some places the 
whole temple, as vast as a cathedral, is hewn 
out of the hillside; the columns in elaborate and 
intricate patterns, the niches and altars wrought 
with inconceivable toil and patience, not a scrap 
added or stuck on. In the dim distance is a huge 
red statue of Siva, wreathed with flowers. 

The colouring in all these rock-temples is a 
softened harmony of yellow stone, hardly darkened 
in some places, forming a setting for the gaudier 
tones of the idols, all sparkling with gold and 
showy frippery. 

One of these halls, almost at the top of the 
mount, accommodated a school. The elder pupils 
sat on stools by the master's side ; the little ones 
and the girls, in groups of five or six, squatted on 
mats in the corners; and all the little people were 
very quiet in the atmosphere of sandal-wood and 
flowers brought as offerings, read gravely out of 
big religious books, and listened to the Brahmin 
as, in a deep, resonant voice, he chanted a sort of 
strongly-marked melody. There was scarcely an 
ornament on the light-coloured walls, pierced with 
deep windows showing foliage without; and among 
the dead whiteness of the mats and the school- 
children's draperies there was but one bright light, 

108 



TRICHINOPOLY 

the bell over the pulpit, surmounted by the sacred 
bull in bronze, of precious workmanship. 

From the summit we looked down over a pano- 
rama of the town, set out in square blocks sunk 
in the verdure of palms, bamboos, and banyans. 
At our feet was the cupola of the temple of Siva, 
all gold, and covered with bosses, the edges of 
the mouldings catching the sun. Besides this a 
number of coloured domes, painted in pale shades 
faded by the sunshine, descended the almost 
perpendicular incline down to the bazaar, where 
the throng was beginning to stir like white ants, 
of slow gait and deliberate gestures, their light- 
hued dhoutis flitting about the stalls for drink 
and fruit. Far away, beyond the bright green 
rice-fields, and against the horizon of intensely 
blue hills, the rocks stand out — French rocks and 
Golden rocks — where the treasure of the con- 
quered natives was distributed to English soldiers. 
It might almost be fancied that a glow of metal 
still shines on the smooth stone, a warm, yellow 
stone bathed in sunshine. 

A Catholic church flanking the Jesuit college 
persistently sent up to us the shrill tinkle of a 
little bell, rattling out its quick, harsh strokes like 

a factory bell for workmen. 

109 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At the bottom of the steps, almost in the 
street, was another school at the entrance to a 
temple. The children, in piercing tones, were all 
spelling together under the echoing vault, a terrible 
noise which seemed to trouble nobody. 

On reaching the temple of Yishnu, on the very 
threshold, we met an elephant marching in front 
of the Brahmin priests, who were carrying water 
in copper amphorse to bathe the idols withal. 
Musicians followed the elephant, playing on bag- 
pipes, on a kind of little trumpet, very short and 
shrill -toned, and on drums ; and the beast, with 
its trunk swaying to right and left, begged a gift 
for the expenses of the temple. 

The priests slowly mounted the stairs, the music 
died away in echoes more and more confused, 
ceasing at last, while the sacred animal, going off 
to the right at the foot of the steps, disappeared 
into its stable. 

In the island of Srirangam we visited a temple 

to Vishnu, enclosed within eight walls, of which 

the three first only contain any dwellings. A 

crowd of pilgrims swarmed about the steps, where 

everything was on sale : little gods in bronze, in 

painted marble, in clay, and in wood ; paper for 

110 



TEICHINOPOLY 

writing prayers on ; sacred books ; red and white 
face-paints, such as the worshippers of Yishnu use 
to mark their foreheads with a V; little baskets to 
hold the colours, with three or four divisions, 
and a mirror at the bottom ; coco-nuts containing 
kohl ; stuffs of every dye ; religious pictures, 
artless indeed, and painted with laborious dabs of 
the brush in the presence of the customer ; chromo- 
lithographs from Europe, sickeningly insipid and 
mawkishly pretty. 

Ehkas, and chigrams closed with thick curtains, 
came galloping past with loud cries from within. 
All was noise and a shifting of many colours, 
seeming more foolish here, in this large island, 
with its deserted avenues of tall trees, than 
anywhere else. 

A portico, supporting two stories of an un- 
finished building, forms the principal entrance ; 
the pilasters are crowned with massive capitals 
scarcely rough -hewn in the stone. This porch 
alone gives an impression of repose, from its 
simplicity of line amid the medley of statues and 
incongruous ornaments loaded with strong colours, 
which, diminishing by degrees, are piled up to 
form each temple, ending almost in a spire against 

the sky. Yishnu, reclining on the undulating rings 

111 



ENCHAI^TED INDIA 

of Ananta Sesha the god of serpents, whose name 
is the Infinite ; idols with human faces riding on 
bulls, and elephants, and prancing horses ; terrible 
Kalis with two fists rammed into their mouth, and 
six other arms spread like open wings ; Ganesa, the 
elephant -headed god, ponderously squatting, his 
hands folded over his stomach ; Garudha, the bird- 
headed god, ridden by Vishnu when he wanders 
through space ; Hanuman, the monkey god, perched 
on a pedestal in an acrobatic attitude, the face 
painted bright green; gods of every size and every 
colour mixed up in a giddy whirl, round and round 
to the very summit of the structure. 

In one of the inmost circles, a sacred elephant 
had gone must, breaking his ropes, and confined 
now by only one leg. The chains fastened round 
his feet as soon as he showed the first symptoms 
of madness were lying broken in heaps on the 
ground. The brute had demolished the walls of 
his stable and then two sheds that happened to 
be in his way ; now he was stamping a dance, every 
muscle in incessant motion, half swallowing his 
trunk, flinging straw in every direction, and finally 
heaping it on his head. A mob of people stood 
gazing from a distance, laughing at his heavy, 

clumsy movements; at the least step forward they 

112 



TRICHII^OPOLY 

huddled back to fly, extending the circle, but still 
staring at the patient. In an adjoining stable were 
two more elephants very well cared for, the V 
neatly painted in red and white on their trunks, 
quietly eating and turning round only at the 
bidding of the driver; but one of them shed 
tears. 

Inside the temple long arcades connect the 
shrines sunk in the thickness of the walls, gloomy 
recesses with images of Vishnu and other idols ; 
where the corridors or arcades cross each other 
there are vast halls with a sculptured roof supported 
by thousands of columns. In one of these halls 
there is a chariot full of divinities. The wheels, 
the horses, the highly- venerated images, are all of 
marble very delicately wrought, and amazing after 
the coarse caricatures on the outside. In the 
courts again, under sheds, there are cars ; one 
of enormous size in black wood carved with 
innumerable figures and interlacing patterns; pen- 
dant ornaments of the same wood sway in the 
wind. The solid wheels, without spokes, small 
and having huge axles, seem made not to turn, 
and the shafts, to which a whole army of the 
faithful harness themselves on the occasion of a 

high festival, are long and as thick as masts. 
I 113 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Another car, past service, lay slowly rotting in a 
corner; almost all its images had vanished, and 
its canopy had fallen off; it v^as almost completely 
hidden nnder aristolochia in blossom. 



MADURA 

Wide strands of golden sand; here and there 
among the rice-fields the palms and bamboos are 
less crowded. In the moist air, that grows hotter 
and hotter, the daylight is blinding, hardly tolerable 
through the blue glass of the windows. Scorched, 
russet rocks stand up from the short grass, tremu- 
lous in the noontide heat. The cattle, the very 
birds, silent and motionless, have sought shelter 
in the shade; all the people have gone within 
doors. And then, towards evening, in an oasis 
of gigantic trees, amid bamboos and feathery reeds, 
behold the huge temples of Madura, in sharp outline 
against a rosy sky. 

The sun had just set, a violet haze was rising 

and enwrapping every object. Fires were being 

lighted in the villages on the road to the holy 

place. Tom-toms were rattling in the distance, 

114 



MADURA 

and nearer at hand a vina, gently touched by an 
invisible player, murmured a tune on three notes. 

The temples were already closed, but my servant, 
Abibulla, diverted the attention of the gatekeeper, 
and I stole unseen into the outer precincts. 

Within the gateway, carved all over with foliage 
and rosettes, a footway, paved with bright mosaic, 
leads to the interior of the temple. All along a 
corridor, enormous prancing horses, mounted by 
men-at-arms, support the roof which is deeply 
carved all over, and at the foot of these giants a 
sacred tank reflects the sky. In front of us were 
gaps of black shadow, and far, far away, lamps, 
shrouded in incense, were twinkling behind the 
gratings. 

Figures draped in pale muslins brushed past us, 
hastening to the door. Flower-sellers, in one of 
the arcades, were hurrying to finish their garlands ; 
and suddenly, close before us — a mass that looked as 
if it were part of the temple itself — an enormous 
elephant started into sight, passed on and vanished 
in the darkness. 

In the depths of little recesses the lamps twinkled 
feebly before images crowned with flowers. At 
the entrances to shrines little glass lamps, like 
a mysterious fairy illumination, followed the lines 

115 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

of the arabesques, sparkling like glowworms, 
without lighting up the passages which remained 
dark, and in which, in fact, we finally lost our- 
selves. 

Near the statues, which are placed in a row close 
to the wall, otlier statues, finer, slenderer, and more 
graceful, stood before the pedestals, anointing the 
stone with some oil which in time soaks in and 
blackens it, or else hanging lanterns up over the 
divinities. These were the temple servants, wearing 
nothing but the langouti tied round their loins; 
they either shuffle about barefoot, or remain motion- 
less in rapt ecstasy before the little niches where 
the idols grin or scowl among branches of roses 
and amaryllis. 

In one brilliantly-lighted hall, priests, dressed in 
long yellow dalmatics, were adoring idols, elephants, 
Anantas ; and from an enormous gold lotus sprang 
the Mandeel, rising through the dome, its tip stand- 
ing in the outer air to bear the white flacj that is 
hoisted on high festivals. At the entrance to this 
shrine parrots in cages suddenly set up a hostile 
outcry as I passed them, and were only pacified 
by the coming of a priest, who gave them some 
food. The clatter, however, had attracted other 

Brahmins; one of them desired me to leave, "and 

116 



MADURA 

at once." I declined to obey, so he sent for the 
elephant who does duty as police, to turn me out. 

And as the priests knew that the beast would 
need no help they again left me to myself. Up 
came the elephant at a brisk trot, flourishing his 
trunk and hooting; within two yards of me he 
stopped and stood still. He accepted a four-anna 
piece that I offered him, and handed it up for his 
driver, but finding no one on his back he put the 
coin back into my pocket, and sniffing all over 
my coat found a biscuit, ate it, and then quietly 
went back to his stable. 

A muffled sound of instruments, mingling in 
confusion in the myriad echoes, came dying on 
my ear, hardly audible. A gleam of light flashed 
in the corridor and then went out. Then some 
lights seemed to be coming towards me, and 
again all was gloom. An orchestra of bagpipes, 
of kemanches and darboukhas sounded close by me, 
and then was lost in the distance, and the phantas- 
magoria of lights still went on. At last, at the 
further end of the arcade where I was standing, 
two men raised green-flamed torches at the end 
of long poles, followed by two drummers and 
musicians playing on bagpipes and viols. Children 

squatting on the ground lighted coloured fire that 

117 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

made a bright blaze, and died out in stifling smoke, 
shrouding the priests — a cloud hardly tinted by the 
torches. 

A golden mass, an enormous shrine chased all 
over and starred with tapers, now came forward, 
borne by a score of naked men. Against the gold 
background, in a perfect glory of diamonds and 
pearls, sat Vishnu, decked out with flowers and 
jewels, his head bare with a huge brilliant in his 
forehead. 

The music played louder, light flashed out on all 

sides, the god stood still, and bayaderes performed 

their worship. With slow gestures, their hands 

first hollowed and held to the brow, then their 

arms flung out, they bowed before the idol with 

a snake-like, gliding motion, while the music played 

very softly and the lights burnt faintly. The 

nauchnees, in dark muslin drapery spangled with 

gold, bangles on their arms, their necks, and their 

ankles, and rings on their toes, swayed as they 

danced, and swung long, light garlands of flowers 

which hung about their necks. And there were 

flowers in their hair, in a bunch on each side of 

the head, above two gold plates from which hung 

strings of beads. The flying, impalpable gauze 

looked like a swirl of mist about their limbs. 

118 



MADURA 

Very gradually the measure quickened, the pitch 
grew shriller, and with faster and freer movements 
the bayaderes were almost leaping in a sort of 
delirium produced by the increasing noise, and the 
constantly growing number of lights. 

Then, in a blaze of coloured fire, a fortissimo of 
music, and a whirlwind of drapery, they stopped 
exhausted in front of the idol. The lights were 
put out, the tom-toms were the only sound, and 
the procession moved on, escorting the shrine which 
glittered for some time yet, till it disappeared at 
an angle, leaving the temple in darkness just tinted 
blue by the moon. 

A different scene indeed next day, with none of 
the magnificence of yesterday, was the temple of 
magical lights. There was a dense crowd of shout- 
ing and begging pilgrims. Along the pyramidal 
roofs, as at Srirangam, there were rows of painted 
gods, but in softer and more harmonious hues. 
Over the tank for ablutions was a balcony decorated 
in fresco, representing in very artless imagery the 
marriage of Siva and Parvati. The couple are seen 
holding hands under a tree; he a martial figure, 
very upright, she looking silly, her lips pursed, 

an ingenue. In another place Siva sits with his 

119 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

wife on his knees, she has still the same school-girl 
expression. Finally, on the ceiling, is their apothe- 
osis : they are enthroned with all the gods of 
Eamayana around them, and she looks just the 
same. The red and green, subdued by the re- 
flected light from the water, were almost en- 
durable. 

Immediately on entering we were in the maze of 
vaults, sanctuaries, great halls and arcades, where 
stall-keepers sell their goods, priests keep school, 
and flower-sellers wander. Statues, repeated in long 
rows, lead up to temples all alike, of a bewildering 
uniformity of architecture and identical decoration. 

Elephants, freshly painted, go past begging. 

Making my way among the too numerous gods in 
relief against the overwrought walls heavy with 
carving, I came to a wonderful balcony where, in 
broken cages, I found the parrots that had betrayed 
me, and among them an exquisite pale yellow 
cockatoo of great rarity. 

One after another I made my salaam to Siva, 
seated on a peacock ; to Ganesa, looking calm and 
knowing; to Parvati, riding a bull; to Siva again, 
this time pinning a dragon to the ground with a 
fork, a writhing reptile with gaping jaws and out- 
spread wings ; the same god again, with a child in 

120 



MADURA 

his arms ; and again, holding his leg like a musket 
up against his shoulder with one of his four hands, 
the other three lifting a bull, a sceptre, and a trophy 
of weapons above his head. 

In a central space was a hideous rajah, a bene- 
factor, with his six wives, all gaudily coloured with 
jewels in coloured paper stuck on to the images, and 
all kneeling in attitudes of idiotic ecstasy, doubly 
absurd under the daubing of vermilion and indigo. 
These were greatly admired by my servant, a con- 
vinced connoisseur in Indian art. Further on we 
saw, on the ceiling of a polychrome corridor, monsters 
carved to fit the shape of squared beams ending in a 
griffin's or a bird's head. 

In a dirty stable, strewn with withered plants, 
stood some forlorn, sickly-looking beasts, the sacred 
bulls of Madura. 

Here again the cars of the gods were neglected in 
the open air, and one of them, older than the rest, 
was fast being transfigured into a pyramid of shrubs 
and flowers. 

Two men were quarrelling ; one had robbed the 
other. The dispute went on endlessly, and no one, 
not the priest even, had succeeded in pacifying them. 
At last an elephant was fetched; he came up with- 
out being noticed by the disputants, and trumpeted 

121 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

loudly just behind them. The thief, convinced that 
the animal in its wisdom had discovered his crime, 
took to his heels and fled. 

In the afternoon, while it was still broad daylight 
and very bright outside, it was already dusk under 
the arches of the temple, and bats were flitting 
about. 

And under an arcade priests were hanging the 
shrine with wreaths of pink and yellow flowers, in 
preparation for its nocturnal progress, while an old 
woman, all alone, was bathing in the tank, with 
much splashing and noise of waters. 

The old palace of the kings is now yellow-ochre, 
coated with plaster and lime-wash over the splendid 
antique marble walls. 

The rajah's sleeping-room has at one end a dais 
ascended by three steps; here the sovereign's bed 
used to be spread ; and here, now, the judges of the 
Supreme Court have their seats. In the middle of 
the room was a confused array of benches and tables, 
and against the walls, also washed with yellow, hung 
a series of portraits of bewigged worthies. 

From the roof, consisting of terraces between 

cupolas, there is a view of many temples glorified 

in the golden sunset, and nearer at hand stand ten 

122 



COLOMBO 

imposing columns, very tall — the last remaining 
vestiges of the rajah's elephant-house. 



TUTICORIN 

A desolate strand, all the vegetation burnt by the 
sun and the sea-breeze. The pearl-oyster, which 
made the fortune of the district, disappeared four 
years since, and has migrated to other parts. The 
fisheries no longer pay, and the boats are dropping 
to pieces on the beach, while the divers beg, deci- 
mated by want. 

An old man who sold us some shells, had, in the 
days of prosperity, made a little fortune by charm- 
ing the sharks with spells and signs that kept them 
away from the boats, and from the naked and 
defenceless pearl-fishers as they plunged into the 
deep to seek the precious shells. 



COLOMBO 

A port crowded with steamers taking in coal, and 

very light barks high out of the water, kept in 

equilibrium by parallel outriggers at the ends of 

two flexible spars. These crank boats, made of 

123 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

planks that scarcely overlap, were piled with lug- 
gage, and the boatmen jostle and turn and skim 
close under the fast -steaming transatlantic liners, 
amid a bewildering babel of shouts and oaths, 
under a sun hot enough to melt lead. 

On the landing-stage we read in large letters: 
"Beware of sunstroke," and lower down, "Avoid 
it by buying the best umbrellas and the best pith 
helmets of John Dash." The streets are the 
commonplace highways of a commercial town ; 
the houses tall, with shops below. Dust and light 
alike were blinding ; jinrickshaws were passing to 
and fro, drawn by almost naked coolies running 
as fast as horses. 

The Cingalese women, of languid gait, wear a 

long dark robe clinging about their legs and 

reaching to the ground. The poorer women have 

only a scanty saree to complete the costume; the 

more wealthy display stockings and boots ; a white 

bodice cut low, with open sleeves and no basque 

leaves a roll of skin visible between the skirt and 

the bodice. The men wear a long loin-cloth of 

English trouser-stuff, a white jacket buttoned over 

the bare skin, and a twist of back hair like a 

woman's, in which they stick a celluloid comb, 

coronet-fashion — such a comb as is used in Europe 

124 



KANDY 

to keep the hair back from a child's forehead. And 
all the race are too slender, too pliant, their eyes 
too long and slightly darkened with kohl ; the boys 
especially have an unpleasant, ambiguous look. 

In every shop of the High Street jewellers are on 
the look-out for customers, hale them in, tease them 
to buy, and open for inspection little bags or card- 
board boxes kept in safes, and containing the finest 
sapphires in the world. The day slips by in bargain- 
ing for the gems, in endless discussions and feigned 
departures. The indefatigable vendors return to 
the charge, run after the customer, wait for him at 
the door of a rival dealer, and drag him back again. 
Then there is a fresh dispute over prices, till irre- 
sistible argument at last brings down the estimates 
to a third or a quarter of what they were at starting. 



KANDY 

Inland from Colombo it is pure enchantment to 

travel among the rich and tangled vegetation of 

every shade of green that grows by the margins of 

the pools, the rivers, and the rice-fields. At first, 

skirting the shallows, where men, standing to their 

waists in water, were fishing with large nets which 

125 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

they managed but clumsily, the flat banks are over- 
grown with anthuriums, their broad leaves of dark 
velvet or of light gauze splashed with rose and 
white, mirrored in the channels that form a network 
to irrigate the rice-swamps. Then ferns, bamboos, 
and feathery reeds in every varying shade of gold ; 
creepers clinging to the trunks of coco trees or 
phoenix-palms bear bunches of pink or yellow 
blossoms between the palm-leaves, invading every- 
thing with their luxuriance, and forming a gaudy 
undergrowth below the tall trees — a light but im- 
penetrable thicket where the sun casts warm purple 
shadows. 

Higher on the hills, amid the rich bright verdure 
of the tea-plantations, we find magnolias, pines, and 
the Campeachy medlar, all wreathed with climbing 
plants and invaded by the young growth of palms, 
by rattans which have succeeded in piercing the 
awning of parasites that hangs, starred with flowers,^ 
from tree to tree — flowers like lamps shining among 
the ripe coco-nuts, mango fruit, and papaws. 

Beyond a wide valley that lay far beneath us a 

mountain-range gleamed softly in the blue distance, 

starry and sapphire-hued above rising levels of 

delicate green. Here, in the fresher air, floated the 

fragrance of mosses and alpine flowers, and above the 

126 



KANDY 

cascades falling in showers we could see the tangle 
of climbing plants, ferns, orchids, and hibiscus, a 
swaying curtain all woven of leaves and blossoms. 

A plantation of theobromas (cacao), carefully en- 
closed and tended, with their puckered leaves, and 
fruit-pods as large as an ostrich egg hanging from 
the trunk and the larger branches, seemed quite 
melancholy, like wild things tethered. 

Then some gardens looking like hothouses, con- 
cealing bungalows, and a gleaming lake among the 
greenery — and this was Kandy. 

In front of a Buddhist temple were some tanks in 
which enormous tortoises were swimming. On the 
building, above carvings of elephants in relief on the 
stone, were a number of mural paintings, artless 
and terrible scenes set forth with the utmost scorn 
of perspective and chiaroscuro: a place of torment 
where green monsters thrust the damned against 
trees of which the trunks are saws, and enormous 
red and yellow birds devour living victims. 

Inside the temple was the fragrance of fresh 
flowers, brought as offerings, with grains of rice 
threaded like semi-transparent beads on the flexible 
pale green stem. A huge Buddha here, of many- 
coloured stones bedizened with gold, gleams in the 

127 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

shade of the altar, and two bonzes in front of the 
idol were quarrelling at great length, with screams 
like angry cats and vehement gesticulations, for the 
possession of some small object which constantly 
passed from one to the other. 

Adjacent to this temple was the court-house, a 

hall of ancient splendour in the time of the kings 

of Kandy. It stood wide open, the walls lined with 

carved wood panels. The court was sitting under the 

punkhas that swung with regular monotony, the 

judges robed in red. One of the accused, standing in 

a sort of pen, listened unmoved to the pleading. A 

large label bearing the number 5 hung over his 

breast. Behind a barrier stood other natives, each 

decorated with a number, under the charge of 

sepoys. One of them, having been wounded in 

the murderous fray for which they were being 

tried, lay at full length on a litter covered with 

pretty matting, red and white and green, stretched 

on bamboo legs. A long robe of light silk enveloped 

his legs, and he alone of them all had charming 

features, long black eyes with dark blue depths, 

his face framed in a sort of halo of silky, tangled 

hair. He, like the man now being sentenced and 

those who had gone through their examination, 

128 



KANDY 

seemed quite indifferent to the judges and the 
lawyers. He mildly waved a palm leaf which 
served him as a fan, and looked as if he were 
listening to voices in a dream, very far away. 

An interpreter translated to the accused the 
questions put by the judge, who understood the 
replies, though he was not allowed to speak ex- 
cepting in English. 

Then a fat native lawyer began to speak, and 
silence fell on the crowd of three or four hundred 
listeners sitting behind the accused, as if they were 
in church. The monotonous voice went on and on, 
urging every plea. 

Even more than the assembly of their relatives 
and friends, the prisoners at the bar maintained the 
impassive mien of men who attach no disgrace to 
a sentence pronounced by a conquering race ; they 
would take the penalty without a murmur, as one 
of the inevitable incidents of this life, which to them 
is but a stage, a passage to a higher existence. 

The song of birds in the mitigated atmosphere of 
the dying day came in from outside, for a moment 
almost drowning the pleader's weariful tones as he 
poured forth his statement, emphasized by sweeping 
gestures. 

K 129 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

In the mystery of a polychrome temple, whose 
walls are closely covered with sculptured bas- 
reliefs of gods in the shape of men or animals, is 
a relic, the sacred tooth of Buddha; and all about 
the precious object, which is enclosed in a series 
of shrines within impenetrable walls, there is no 
sign of respect, but all the noise and bustle of a 
fair, a perfect turmoil of hurrying, chattering folk, 
whose only anxiety is to keep unbelievers away 
from the sacred spot. 

The forest round Kandy is glorious, an exuber- 
ance, a crush of trees growing as thick as they can 
stand, the dense tangle of boughs and leaves out- 
grown by some enormous ficus, or tall terminalia, 
whose sharp, angular roots have pushed through the 
soil while its trunk, twisting in a spiral, has made 
its way to a prodigious height, ending a thick dome 
of foliage. This, again, is overgrown by delicate 
creepers decking the green mass with their flowers. 
Spreading banyans, with a hundred stems thrown 
out like branches and ending in roots, form colon- 
nades of a rosy grey hue like granite, and might 
seem to be the vestiges of some colossal church 
with a dark vault above, scarcely pierced here 
and there by a gleam of blue light from the sky 

beyond. Among these giants of the forest dwells a 

130 



KANDY 

whole nation of bending ferns as pliant as feathers, 
of clinging plants hanging in dainty curtains of 
flowers from tree to tree. Sometimes between the 
screen of flowers a bit of road comes into view, deep 
in impalpable brick-red dust, of the same tint as the 
fruits that hang in branches from the trees. 

A kind of lemon plant, with picotee-like flowers 
of a texture like crystalline pearl, its petals deli- 
cately fringed, exhales a fresh scent like verbena. 
Then, on an ebony-tree, overgrown with succulent 
leaves forming an edging to every bough, is a bird 
— as it would seem — a lilac bird, with open wings, 
which, as we approach, turns into an orchid. 

Above a large fan - palm the pale fronds of a 
talipot soar towards the sky, gracefully recurved 
like enormous ostrich plumes. A fluff, a down, of 
flowers clings to the stems of the magnificent crest, 
a delicate pale cloud; and the broad leaves of the 
tree, which will die when it has blossomed, are 
already withering and drooping on the crown. 
Then, in the clearings made by the recent decay 
of such a giant, falling where it had stood, and 
crushing the bamboos and phcenix that grew round 
its foot, the flowers sprang in myriads — great sun- 
flowers, shrubs of ^oinsettia, with its tufts of red 

or white bracts at the end of a branch of green 

131 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

leaves, surrounding a small inconspicuous blossom, 
and tall, lavender-blue lilies. 

There was not a sound, not a bird, excepting 
on the fringe of the forest. As we penetrated 
further there soon was no undergrowth even on 
the dry soil, between the ever closer array of 
trees ; the creepers hung very low, tangled with 
clinging parasites ; and between the stilt-like and 
twining roots and the drooping boughs, the path, 
now impracticable, suddenly ended in face of the 
total silence and black shade that exhaled a strong 
smell of pepper, while not a leaf stirred. 

Colombo again; and again the jewellers and 
their blue stones — an intoxicating, living blue. 

In the harbour, where there was a light breeze 
blowing, the little outrigged canoes had hoisted 
large sails, white edged with black, and vanished 
into the distance, skimming like winged things over 
the intensely blue water. 

Men were carrying mud in enormous turtle-shells 
that they used for baskets. 

Little beggar-girls with a depraved look, artful 
little hussies, pursued us coaxingly : " Give some- 
thing, sahib, to pretty Cingalee girl, who wants to 

go over sea to where the gentlemens live," 

132 



MADEAS 



MADRAS 

The city produces an impression as of a town 
built in the clouds and then dropped, scattered 
over the plain with vast arid and barren spaces 
left between the houses. In the native and 
Moslem quarters, indeed, there is a crowd of 
buildings, closely packed, crammed together on 
quite a small plot of ground ; and among them 
the electric tramway runs its cars, useless just 
now, and empty of travellers, for it is the 
beginning of Eamadan, and the Mohammedans in 
broad daylight are letting off crackers in honour 
of the festival. 

In the hotel compound — more absurd than all 
the rest, lost in a waste of open land beyond the 
seething native town — there was a swarm of 
coolie servants, their wives and their children, 
who played all day at climbing about the coaches 
put up under the trees. And, without ceasing, 
a maddening hubbub of laughter and crying came 
up from this litter of brats, more weariful than 
the silence of vacancy all around. 

The draught-oxen all had their horns painted 

133 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

in gaudy colours, generally one horn blue and the 
other green. 

In the evening, in the open street, we came upon 
a circle of bystanders all beating time, while in the 
midst four little girls were dancing, wearing the 
sarong, but naked to the waist. They leaned very 
much over to the right, resting the right elbow on 
the groin, clapping the right hand with the left, and 
throwing back the left leg. All four did the same, 
round and round, and this went on again and again 
without a pause, under the pale light of the stars 
filtering through an enormous banyan tree. Occa- 
sionally a woman among the crowd would give 
a slow, long-drawn cry, and the dancers answered 
in very short notes, piercingly shrill. 

In the native town, on a tank in front of a 
temple, a raft was moving very slowly. Under a 
dazzlingly gorgeous canopy stood an idol of gold, 
covered with garlands and jewels. A dense crowd, 
white and fragrant with jasmine and sandal-wood, 
stood about the sacred pool and on the steps, and 
bowed reverently as the divinity floated past. 

One old man, indeed, bowed so low that he fell 

into the water, and all the worshippers shouted 

with laughter. 

The streets were hung with gaudy flags and 

134 



HABEAS 

coloured paper. Altars had been erected, four 
poles supporting an awning with flounces of 
bright-coloured silk, and under them a quantity 
of idols, of vases filled with amaryllis and roses, 
and even dainty little Dresden figures — exquisite 
curtseying Marquises, quite out of their element 
among writhing Vishnus and Kalis. 

That evening, near the temple where the god, 
having left the tank, was receiving the flowers 
and scents offered by his votaries, there was howl- 
ing and yelling from the crowd of Hindoos, all 
crushing and pushing, but going nowhere. And 
louder yet the noise of the tom-toms, which the 
musicians raised to the desired pitch by warming 
them in front of big fires throwing off clouds of 
acrid smoke. 

In one tent there was a display of innumerable 
gilt images, very suggestive of Jesuit influence — 
mincing, chubby angels, martyrs carrying palm- 
branches, and ecstatic virgins with clasped hands, 
all serving to decorate the shrine in which the 
god was to be carried back to the temple. Coloured 
fires lighted the workmen, and in the background 
the temple was darkly visible, with only a few 
dim lamps shrouded in incense, and burning before 

Eama, whose festival was being kept. 

135 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

The god having been placed in the shrine, which 
was enormously heavy, and took a hundred men to 
carry it, the procession set out. First two drums, 
then some children burning coloured fire and whirl- 
ing fireworks round above their heads. Three oxen 
with housings of velvet, richly embroidered in gold, 
carried tom-tom drummers, and behind them came 
the priests and the god, hardly visible among the 
lights and flowers on the shrine. A breath of awe 
fell on the crowd as the divinity came by; they 
bowed in adoration with clasped hands and heads 
bent very low. 

To light the way, coolies carried long iron tridents 
tipped with balls of tow soaked in oil. The mass 
moved slowly forward through the people, suddenly 
soothed to silence. The procession paused at the 
wayside altars, and then, in the middle of a circle 
formed by the torch-bearers and coloured lights, the 
sacred bayaderes appeared — three girls with bare 
heads, dressed in stiff new sarongs heavy with 
tinkling trinkets, and an old woman crowned with 
a sort of very tall cylindrical tiara of red velvet 
embroidered with gold. Very sweet-toned bagpipes 
and some darboukhas played a slow tune, and the 
dancers began to move; they spun slowly round, 
their arms held out, their bodies kept rigid, except- 

136 



MADEAS 

ing when they bowed to the shrine. The crude 
light of the red fire or the sulphurous flare of the 
torches fell on their glittering ornaments, alter- 
nately festive and mysterious, shedding over the 
performance an atmosphere at once dreamy and 
magically gorgeous. 

Then all went out, died gently away; the tom- 
toms and pipe attending the god's progress alone 
were audible in the silence ; till in the distance 
a great blaze of light flashed out, showing a crowd 
of bright turbans and the glittering splendour of 
the shrine going up the steps to the temple where, 
till next year, Eama would remain — the exiled god, 
worshipped for his wisdom which enabled him to 
discover the secrets, to find the true path, and win 
the forgiveness of his father. 

The doors were shut; all was silence — the still- 
ness of the star-lit night. 

Many hapless creatures here suifer from elephan- 
tiasis, and even quite little children are to be seen 
with an ankle stiffened, or perhaps both the joints 
ossified; and the whole limb will by -and -by be 
swollen by the disease, a monstrous mass dreadfully 
heavy to drag about. Other forms of lupus affect 

the face, and almost always, amid a crowd watching 

137 



ENCHAITTED INDIA 

some amusing performance, a head suddenly appears 
of ivory whiteness, the skin clinging to the bone or 
disfigured by bleeding sores. 

Steaming over the transparent and intensely blue 

sea, we presently perceived an opaquer streak of 

sandy matter, getting denser, and becoming at last 

liquid, extremely liquid, yellow mud — the waters 

of the Ganges, long before land was in sight. 

Between the low banks, with their inconspicuous 

vegetation, a desolate shore, we could have fancied 

we were still at sea when we had already reached 

the mouth of the sacred stream. Some Hindoos on 

board drew up the water in pails to wash their 

hands and face, fixing their eyes in adoration on 

the thick sandy fluid. Enormous steamships 

crossed our bows, and in the distance, like a flock 

of Ibis, skimmed a whole flotilla of boats with 

broad red sails, through which the low sun was 

shining. The banks closed in, the landscape grew 

more definite — tall palm trees, plots of garden 

ground, factory chimneys, a high tower. On the 

water was an inextricable confusion of canoes and 

row-boats flitting among the steamships and sailing 

barks moored all along the town that stretched 

away out of sight. 

138 



CALCUTTA 



CALCUTTA 

An aggressive capital ! Palaces of concrete and 
stucco washed with yellow stand cheek by jowl 
with commission agencies and hovels, and all with- 
out a suspicion of style, not even giving one the 
impression of a southern city. In the streets, thick 
with dust, an all-prevailing turmoil as of a fair 
is prolonged to the latest hours of night. Eed 
uniforms and " young England " tourist suits end- 
ing their career in rags on half-breed coolies — a 
wearisome staleness and total effacement of local 
colour, worse than commonplace; and then, above 
all, a very strong and nauseating smell of lotus and 
tallow, with an after -gust of something peppery 
and acrid. 

In the street of native shops the possible pur- 
chaser is attacked by storm, every voice yelps out 
prices. The dealers scrambled into my carriage 
with a whole catalogue of bargains poured out in a 
mixed lingo, and with such overpowering insistence 
that I had to fly. An electric tram-car, provided 
with a loud bell that rings without ceasing, runs 

through the suburbs, a dirty swarming quarter 

139 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

where the streets are alive with naked children, 
fowls and pigs wallowing in heaps of filth and the 
mud made by watering the road. 

Past a magnificent railway station, and through a 
manufacturing district of tall furnaces, we came to 
the quiet country and the Ganges, bordered with 
gardens, where creepers in flower hang over the 
muddy stream stained with iridescent grease and 
soot. 

Eound the railway station crowds the village of 
Chandernagore, the huts close together, with no 
land to spare, and at length we were in the city 
of houses, with broad terraces in front in a classic 
style, with colonnades and decorations in relief, and 
broad eaves overhanging for shade. And beautiful 
gardens, bougainvilleas, and almond trees, white- 
blossomed faintly touched with pink, hedge in 
streets with foreign-sounding names. The air was 
full of the fresh scent of water and greenery and 
of the blessed peace of silence — so rare in India. 

The cathedral, embowered in shrubs and tall 
banyans, stands on a square, where a pedestal 
awaits the bust of Dupleix. 

A stone parapet runs along the river road, and 

below it the grassy bank slopes gently to the clear 

and limpid stream of the Ganges. On the shores 

140 



CHANDEENAGOEE 

of the sacred river fine trees overshadow many- 
idols, and fresh flowers are constantly laid at their 
feet. 

In the city, which is swept and cleaned till it is 
hard to believe oneself among Hindoos, there are 
six hundred tanks, for the most part stagnant, in 
which the natives wash themselves and their 
clothes. Eound others, which are gradually being 
appropriated to the use of the residents, and all 
about the houses, bamboos are planted and " flame 
of the forest," covered with enormous red star- 
shaped blossoms as solid as fruit, and trees curtained 
with creepers of fragile growth — one long garden 
extending almost to the bazaar. 

At night the sound of a remote tom-tom attracted 
me to a large square shaded by giant trees. In a 
very tiny hut made of matting, a misshapen statue 
of Kali, bedizened with a diadem, a belt, nanparas, 
and bangles made of beads and gold tinsel, stood 
over a prostrate image in clay of Siva, lying on his 
back. In front of this divinity, under an awning 
stretched beneath the boughs of a banyan tree, two 
nautch- girls in transparent sarees were dancing a 
very smooth sliding step to the accompaniment of 
two bagpipes and some drums. The Hindoo spec- 
tators sat in a circle on the ground — a white mass 

141 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

dimly lighted by a few lanterns — and sang to the 
music a soft, monotonous chant. 

Then a man rose, and standing on the bayaderes' 
carpet, he recited, in verses of equal measure, a sort 
of heroic legend, making his voice big, and emphasiz- 
ing his words with grand gesticulation. One of the 
dancers spoke the antistrophe, and this went on 
interminably, till their voices gradually sank to 
mere hollow and expressionless intoning, while they 
swayed their bodies to and fro like children who do 
not know their lesson. 

Then the dancing began again, interrupted for a 
minute by the call of the night-watchman as he 
went past carrying a long bamboo. He paused for 
a moment to watch the performance, and then was 
lost in the darkness. 

At last, when it was very late, the reciter lifted 
the heavy idol on to his head. A few worshippers 
followed him, carrying the flowers, the little jars 
and the baskets offered to the goddess, and the pro- 
cession marched off towards the Ganges ; while the 
nautch-girls went on with their performance, giving 
loud, sharp shrieks out of all time with the shrill 
but somnolent music. 

The bearer of Kali walked into the sacred river 

up to his knees, and then dropped the idol. The 

142 



CHANDEENAGOKE 

Hindoos who had followed him fell prostrate in 
fervent prayer, hiding their face in their hands, and 
then flung after the goddess, now lost in the waters, 
all the baskets, jars, and flowers, to be carried down 
the stream. For a moment the silver paper crown 
which had floated up spun on the water that was 
spangled by the moon, and then it sank in an 
eddy. 

The people came back to the dancing, which went 
on till daylight. The music could be heard in the 
distance, drowned from time to time by the yelling 
of the jackals or the watchman's call, and it was not 
till daybreak that the drumming ceased. 

In the little white church, all open windows, mass 

was performed by a priest with a strong Breton 

accent. During the sermon, to an accompaniment 

of parrots' screaming and kites' whistling, there 

was a constant rustle of fans, which were left on 

each seat till the following Sunday. The church 

was white and very plain ; French was spoken, and 

little native boys showed us to our places on benches. 

Old women in sarees were on their knees, waving 

their arms to make large signs of the cross. A 

worthy Sister presided at the harmonium, and the 

little schoolgirls sang in their sweet young voices 

143 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

airs of the most insipid type ; but after the incessant 
hubbub of bagpipes and tom-toms their music seemed 
to me quite dehcious, raising visions in my mind of 
masterpieces of harmony and grace. 

In the afternoon — calm and almost cool — I went 
to call on the Eesident, who talked to me of India 
in the days of Dupleix, of its departed glory, and 
the poor old fort of Chandernagore, once impreg- 
nable and now demolished under the provisions of 
treaties ; and as we walked on through the town, 
between gardens that look like the great parks of 
the French kings, all the past seemed to live again on 
this forgotten spot of earth, and every moment, in 
the silence of the purple dusk, I could have fancied 
that I saw in the avenues, under the tall phoenix 
palms, the shades of powdered marquises in skirts 
with full farthingales, and of gallant knights of 
St. Louis ; then from a far distance came the sound 
of a piano — some simple melody quavering in the 
air that was so full of memories. 



144 



DARJEELING 



DARJEELING 

Beyond Siliguri, where we left the main line, a 

little toy railway, going very slowly, jostles the 

travellers across rice plantations and woods of giant 

trees, under whose shade tree-ferns expand on the 

banks of the streams. By the side of the water springs 

are hung prayers written on strips of rice-paper that 

flutter in the wind from the shrubs and bamboos, 

mingling with the blossoms of rhododendron and 

funkia, spots of bright colour showing against the 

forest of mighty cedars and sycamores and gloomy 

palms. Clinging to the highest branches, orchids 

like birds are to be seen, and from bush to bush 

hang bright green threads covered with white stars, 

tangled into hanks and hooked on to every thorn. 

The vegetation of banyans, phoenix, and other tropical 

plants gradually becomes mixed with oak, box, and 

plane trees, and then disappears altogether as we 

get higher; and presently, as we pass through a 

belt of great dark firs, the shrubs, the mosses, and 

even the flowers are those of Europe. Higher up, 

the mountain side is mapped out into lines and 

squares, green and russet, looking from a distance 
L 145 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

like ribbed velvet; these are the tea plantations. 
The horizon grows broader, spreading away and 
out of sight towards the vision -like mountains 
forming the outposts of the Himalayas ; up to the 
very verge of the eternal snows they are cultivated 
in the same rib-like strips, all tea plantations ; and 
amid the shrubs are the little factories where the 
precious leaves are dried, and villages of little 
homesteads lost among the greenery, or peeping 
through the opalescent haze, intensely blue under 
the pure, cold sky and crude sunshine. The natives 
here wear skins with the fur inside; the leather 
outside is patterned with red or blue cloth. Men 
and women alike go about in felt boots, which give 
them an unsteady and straddling gait. 

Above Darjeeling — a modern and fashionable 
health-resort, a town of villas, for the most part 
with corrugated iron roofs — hangs a dense mist, 
cutting off the horizon at a distance of a few 
miles ; and through the dull substance of this 
fleece, at an impossible height, there was a reflection 
— a mirage, an illusion, a brighter gleam, a bluer 
shadow, which might be the top of a mountain; 
but so high up, so far away, and above all so 
transient, that it failed to fix itself on the memory, 

blotted out at once by the pallid wall that shut 

146 



DARJEELING 

in the scene. But at sunset one thickness of the 
haze melted away, unveiling, leagues on leagues 
away, a chain of giant mountains, not yet the 
snowy peaks, but bright-hued cliffs on which gold 
and purple mingled in symphonies before dying 
into violet, turning to blue in the moonlight; and 
the mists fell once more — a shroud at our feet, 
an abyss of shadows, in which the tea-planters' 
lamps twinkled through the darkness. 

In the sleeping town of Darjeeling a bell and 
drum were sounding to announce the Tibetan 
Christmas. The Brahmin paradise remained in- 
visible and mysterious behind a clear sky studded 
with stars. 

Next morning — so far, so high on the horizon ! I 
saw a pink spot; then, as day broke, the rose 
colour spread — broader, lower, turned paler, then to 
white, and the Himalayas lay before me in blinding 
glory of size and light. Kinchinjunga, at a measure- 
less distance, looked in the clear air as if it were 
quite close; and round the sovereign giant other 
giants rent their wrappings of cloud, an amphi- 
theatre of peaks of dazzling whiteness lost against 
the sky, and almost insensibly fading away behind 

the vapour that rolled up from the abysses, grew 

147 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

thicker, and settled into a compact mass over the 
lost summits, hiding the nearer heights and shroud- 
ing Darjeeling in opaque white fog. 

Eound a temple, with iron roofs ending in copper 
balls at the top, a crowd was watching, some seated 
on steps cut in the soil and some squatting on the 
hillside, here almost perpendicular. By the temple 
long white streamers, fluttering from bamboo poles, 
were covered with painted prayers. A Lama was 
enthroned in an armchair under an arbour of pine- 
branches ; he wore a yellow robe, and above a face 
like a cat's he had a sort of brass hat surmounted 
by a coral knob; his little beard was quite white, 
and he turned his praying machine with a steady, 
dull movement, perfectly stolid. Two women stood 
by his side fanning him, dressed in close-fitting 
aprons of dark cloth bordered with a brighter 
shade, and opening over pale pink satin petticoats, 
on their heads crowns of flowers of every hue. 

Four women and two men wearing masks 

stretched in a broad grimace — one of the men in a 

red satin robe edged with leopard-skin, while the 

other had a squalid white shirt, intentionally soiled, 

over all his clothes — then began to dance round the 

priest, stopping presently to spin very fast on one 

148 



DARJEELING 

spot, and the girls' skirts floated gracefully in heavy 
folds, showing their under-skirts of bright satin 
embroidered with silver and gold. One of these 
women, who were not satisfied with painting their 
faces, by way of adornment, on the nose and cheeks 
with blackened pig's blood, took off her mask, 
showing her whole face smeared with it. She 
and the man in the dirty shirt played a number 
of mountebank's tricks to the great delectation 
of the spectators, and she finished amid thunders 
of applause by seating herself on the Lama's knee 
and stroking his beard. 

Cymbals and kettle-drums formed the orchestra, 
reinforced by the shrill cries and strident laughter 
of the spectators. 

Whenever there was a pause in the dance the 
performers, to amuse themselves, sang a scale, 
always the same, beginning on a very high note, 
or sometimes taken up from the lowest bass pitch, 
and marking time with their stamping feet. 

Far up the hill, and for a long time, the clanging 

brass and sharp cries followed me on my way all 

through the afternoon, and I could picture the 

dancing women, the Lama under his gleaming brass 

hat, turning his praying-wheel beneath his bower 

of branches and papers fluttering in the wind ; and 

149 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

not till dark did the whole party break up and 
go back to Darjeeling; the poorer women, on foot, 
all a little tipsy, danced a descending scale that 
ended occasionally in the ditch; the richer ladies, 
in thin dark satin robes with wide sleeves all 
embroidered in silk and gold, and their hair falling 
in plaits from beneath a fillet of red wood studded 
with large glass beads, fitting tightly to the head, 
rode astride on queer little horses, mostly of a 
dirty yellow colour, that carried them at a brisk 
amble. Their husbands, extremely attentive, 
escorted the dames, some of whom gave noisy 
evidence of the degree of intoxication they had 
reached. The least blessed had but one husband, 
or perhaps two ; but the more fortunate had a 
following of as many as six eager attendants, whom 
they tormented with incessant scolding. 

Off at four in the morning, led by a Mongol 
guide with a broad expressionless yellow face. My 
steed was a perfect little devil of a horse of a light 
coffee colour. 

I rode to Tiger Hill. Overhead hung a dense 

mist, like a roof of shadow, perfectly still, wrapping 

us in damp and frightfully cold vapour. After two 

hours' ride in the darkness we reached our destina- 

150 



DARJEELING 

tion. Suddenly the cloud fell like a curtain pulled 
down, the sky appeared, and then the earth at our 
feet became visible in the starlight. Some vestiges 
of a temple could be discerned among the grass — 
the foundations of enormous halls, and still stand- 
ing in solitude, the brick chimneys in which the 
devout were wont to burn their prayers, written 
on rice-paper. Far away, in the transparent air, 
above a wall of grey cloud — the dull, dingy 
grey of dirty cotton-wool — a speck showed as a 
beacon of lilac light, of the hue and form of a 
cyclamen flower; this turned to rose, to brick-red, 
to warm gold colour, fading into silver; and then, 
against the blue sky, showed immaculately white. 
This was Gaurisankar — Mount Everest — the top of 
the world, appallingly high, inconceivably vast, 
though lost in the distance, and seen from a hillock 
three thousand metres above the sea. 

After the giant a whole chain of lavender and 
rose-coloured peaks turning to blue came into sight 
in the marvellously clear atmosphere ; then the sun 
rose below us, in the throbbing tide of heat the 
mountains seemed to come closer to us, but imme- 
diately the mist gathered about Gaurisankar. " The 
Apsaras wearing impenetrable veils, that mortals 

may not gaze too long on the throne of the gods," 

151 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

said my sa'is, who had fallen on his face since the 
first appearance of the snow-crowned colossus, with 
hands upraised towards the paradise of Indra. 

For another minute the sublime ice-peak re- 
mained visible through the gauzy whiteness, and 
then a cloud rising from beyond the range descended 
on the heights and gradually enfolded the whole 
chain. 

As we returned, vistas of unreal definiteness 
showed us endless valleys lost in the distance, and 
vast spaces cultivated in green and russet stripes — 
the tea plantations that spread below the now 
vanished splendour of the snows. At a turning 
in the road stands a cross, erected there in memory 
of an epidemic of suicide that broke out among the 
soldiers of the English fort — a small structure of 
stone with an iron roof that faces the heaven- 
scaling range. 

Towards noon the mass of Kinchinjunga again 
lifted its head above the clouds, now white with 
a dust of rosy gold or violet on the snow in the 
shadows; and again, as the clouds swept across, 
of every changing tint of steel and copper, pearl 
and sunshine, till, following on the ardent glory of 
sunset, a purple and living fire, like a flame within 
the very substance of the ice-fields, all died into 

152 



DAEJEELING 

mysterious blueness under the broad pure light 
of the moon. 

All the day long a solid blue mass melting into 
rain hid the mountains and darkened the nearer 
view; and our return journey was made between 
two grey walls, through which the trees, which 
sometimes met in an arch overhead, were but dimly 
visible. 

At the railway station thousands of people had 
collected to take leave of a great turbaned mooUah 
from Mecca, dressed in yellow silk. Long after 
we had left Darjeeling the faithful ran by the 
side of the carriage to kiss his hand, on which 
blazed an enormous diamond cut in a cone ; and 
all along the road, when the train going downhill 
went too fast for anyone to keep up with it, 
Moslem natives bowed and prostrated themselves 
in the road, shouting words of Godspeed to the 
holy man. And at one stopping -place a little 
carpet was spread, on which he took off his shoes 
and prayed — hurried through his last prostrations 
by the whistle of the locomotive. 

At night, when the fog had at last cleared off, a 

column of fire was piled up on the engine ; it shone 

153 



EjS-CHANTED INDIA 

on the smooth trunks of the " flame of the forest," 
which looked like the pillars of a cathedral, on the 
sparkling water-springs all hung about with prayer- 
strips, on the veronica shrubs covered with flowers 
and as tall as trees, and the sheaves of bamboo 
and fern ; or it lighted up the hanging screen of 
creepers, the impenetrable jungle growth that shut 
in the silence of the sleeping forest. 



BENARES 

Yellow palaces, mirrored as gold in the luminous 

waters of the Ganges, came into view; cupolas 

quivering with dazzling lustre against the intense 

sky — and then the whole city vanished. N'othing 

was to be seen but a suburb of shabby buildings, 

the commonplace railway station crowded by a 

Burmese pilgrimage of Buddhists come from so far 

— who knows why? — to the holy Indian city. 

Yellow priests and white doll-like figures dragging 

bundles that fell open, dropping the most medley 

collection of objects to be picked up and stowed 

into the parcels again, only to roll out once more. 

A yelling crowd, hustling and bustling, shouting 

from one end of the station to the other, and finally 

164 



BENARES 

departing, like a flock of sheep, in long files down 
the dusty road, to be lost at last in the little 
bazaar. 

All along the narrow streets, paved with broad 
flagstones up and down in low irregular steps, stand 
the five hundred temples of Benares, and between 
them houses with carved stone porticoes. The 
ochre-coloured stone, of which they all are built, 
is toned in places by a coating of reddish purple, 
faded by the rain and sun to pale flesh-colour, with 
an undertone of the yellow wall ; and this takes on 
a glow as of ruby and sunset fires in the watery 
ripple reflected from the river — a mingling of every 
hue of intense sunshine, filtering through the 
awnings spread over the balconies — a glory of 
repose, tender and clear, which seems to emanate 
from the objects themselves, and to envelop them in 
a fine powder of light. 

Squeezed in and crushed between houses that 

tower above it, rises the pointed dome of Biseshwar 

Matti, covered with leaves of chased gold; smaller 

cones surround the principal dome, bristling with 

tiny pyramids of gold, carved into flowers round 

statues of Kali with her eight arms, of Ganesa, 

and of peacocks with spread tails. Under this 

splendid cupola, dazzlingly bright against the sky, 

155 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the temple itself is quite small, and strictly closed 
against the unbeliever. Some pious hands had hung 
chains of jasmine and roses above the entrance, and 
they gave a touch of beauty to the stonework, very 
old, and soiled with large stains of oil. A sense of 
intense piety hangs about this sanctuary, subdues 
every voice, and bends the head of every passer-by 
in reverence of the mystery, and they all bring 
flowers. 

Under an arcade, lightly tinted with faded colours, 
and supporting a heavy stone roof elaborately 
carved, a marble bull stands facing the well which 
Vishnu touched when he came down from heaven. 
This is the Court or Well of Wisdom. 

Two fakirs, squatting in a corner, gazed at the 
sacred stone, their bodies rigidly motionless; they 
did not seem to be of this world, rather to be 
statues of gods themselves; their eyes alone were 
alive — burning. 

Further on, in the temple stables, open to the sky 

and surrounded by a colonnade of carved and 

painted pillars, some women, in silken sarees of 

dark hues, were waiting on the bulls and the tiny 

zebu cows, feeding them with the flower offerings 

strewn on the mosaic pavement of the courtyard. 

156 



BENARES 

From the top of the observatory, where instru- 
ments, all out of order, are to be seen on the deserted 
terraces, a staircase in a half-circle of stonework 
leads straight up to the open sky, and there the eye 
is dazzled by the view of Benares, all spread out 
below : the vast city of yellow stone, the cupolas 
of its temples, and its palaces stretching far along 
the Ganges, which slowly rolls its milky green waters 
under a sky of almost pearly whiteness ; and in 
the distance the grassy plain of bright emerald 
green, lost on the horizon that throbs with the 
heat. Everything was wrapped in a halo rather 
than a haze, faintly blue with the smoke that went 
up from the funeral piles of the Hindoo dead. 

One of the servants of the place, sitting in the 
shade of the arcade, was painting, after a strange 
method. He sprinkled powdered colour on the sur- 
face of some water in a tub, outlining the colour with 
black ; then, with a feather, he massed and arranged 
the colours, taking some off and replacing it in 
infinitesimal quantities. Finally the result was a 
representation of Siva and Ourasi, robed in blue 
and violet, against a background of crude red. 
When they were quite finished he jerked the bowl, 
giving the figures a curtseying motion, and stood 
a little \^ay off to contemplate the general effect ; 

157 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

and then, quite satisfied, stirred the whole thing 
up and began again, the same picture, with the 
same precise care. 

We sailed past the holy city in a heavy, massive 
junk, the prow formed of a snake with its head 
erect and jaws yawning, down the Ganges, all 
rippled with rose and blue. Palaces, and more 
palaces, with thick walls and towers, that look like 
bastions, stand in perspective as far as the eye can 
see. Windows and balconies are cut in the pon- 
derous masonry at the level of the third floor, and 
high above these rajahs' dwellings rise the domes of 
the temples, pointing skywards among tall trees that 
spread their shade on the russet stonework. At 
the foot of the palaces, steps lead down to the 
river, divided by little stages covered with wicker 
umbrellas that shine in the sun like discs of gold; 
under these, Brahmins, after bathing, were telling 
their beads. Now and again they dipped their 
fingers in the sacred waters and moistened their 
eyes, forehead, and lips. 

One of the largest buildings once slid into the 
river during an earthquake, and stands there com- 
plete and unbroken, its magnificence surviving under 
water. Some minarets only rise above the surface 

like kiosks, and form a landing-stage, invaded by 

158 



BENARES 

the bathers, who wash themselves with much 
gesticulation, flourishing their long sarongs and 
white loin-cloths, which they spread out to dry on 
the steps. 

Between the large parasols are thousands of little 
pagodas, formed of four columns and a roof, and 
sheltering idols wreathed with flowers, to whom the 
faithful pray and bring offerings. Garlands are for 
ever floating down-stream, jasmine and Indian pinks, 
and patches of scattered rose petals; and on the 
banks of the river, where the sand forms little bays, 
flowers lie in a hem of delicate colours. 

Down the middle of the Ganges a white bundle is 
being borne, and on it a crow pecking the body of a 
child wrapped in its winding-sheet. 

From the broad steps on the shore other narrower 
flights lead to archways and porticoes, or zigzag up to 
the lanes that make a gap of distant blackness in 
the light-hued mass of palaces and embankments. 

Then from afar came the sound of tom-toms and 
bagpipes, nearer and nearer, and the musicians 
became visible at the top of one of the stair-like 
alleys. First came the men, then the women. One 
of these, robed in pale green with a violet and silver 
saree, carried a child in her arms wrapped in a red 
dress embroidered with gold. He was this day six 

159 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

months old ; he had eaten rice, and was brought to 
see the sacred Ganges for the first time. The family, 
friends, and neighbours had assembled in honour of 
the great ceremony, which consisted in holding the 
infant face downwards over the water, which he 
scarcely saw with half-shut eyes; and then the 
procession went back again to the sound of the 
music, and was gone. 

Close to a temple, of which the cornice is decorated 
with female figures holding musical instruments, on 
a sort of terrace a party of youths were making a 
distracting din with brass instruments, acutely shrill, 
and, of course, tom-toms. Two very small temples 
covered with brass that shines like gold stand in 
the bazaar to mark the beginning and end of the 
coppersmiths' quarter, where every stall rings with 
the tinkle of the little hammers tapping the metal 
that is beaten into trays and pots and a thousand 
vessels for the worship of the gods and for domestic 
purposes. Workmen aged four, the great-grand- 
sons of the master-smith, were already trying their 
'prentice hand, chiselling the hard metal with a free 
touch, and ornamenting cups and bowls of traditional 
shape. And this is the only part of the calm and 

lazy city, living on its temples and its sacred river, 

160 



BENARES 

where the visitor feels himself a "tourist." Here 
the shops for the special craft of Benares are fur- 
nished with the unwonted luxury of chairs, and 
some display of signs and wares is made. Further 
on is a large open place full of piles of flowers, 
garlands of jasmine and marigold, and heaps of rose 
petals to be strewn on the water. 

Next came a whole row of very small shops, where 
there was an endless variety of trifles for sale, toys 
made of wood painted red and green ; and finally, on 
the ground floor of houses ornamented with carvings 
and slender colonnades, in a cool and shady and 
silent street, were the sellers of silk and cloth. 

Past the buildings, and palaces with gardens en- 
closed behind pierced stonework, and then across 
fresh green fields full of flowers, under the shade of 
banyans and palm trees, we reached the temple of 
the monkeys. This temple, dedicated to the fierce 
and bloodthirsty goddess Durga, is painted all over 
of a vivid red colour, blazing in the sunshine with 
intolerable brightness. Inside the sanctuary a black 
image of the goddess may be seen, mounted on her 
lion, and flowers are arranged about her in radiating 
lines mingled with gold thread, and producing very 

much the effect of a theatrical sun. In the fore- 
M 161 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

court, on the carvings and the roof of the temple 
monkeys swarm, rushing after each other, fighting 
for the grains of maize that are thrown to them, 
and tormenting the wretched mangy dogs that seek 
refuge in the temple precincts, where they, too, are 
kept alive by the faithful. 

A poor sick ape, beaten by all the others, sat 
crying with hunger at the top of a parapet. I 
called her for a long time, showing her some maize 
on a tray. At last she made up her mind to come 
down. With the utmost caution she reached me, 
and then, after two or three feints, she struck the 
platter with her closed fist, sending all the grain 
flying. Utterly scared, she fled, followed to her 
perch by a whole party of miscreants roused by the 
gong-like blow on the tray. Others stole into the 
temple to snatch the flowers while the attendant 
priest had his back turned ; and when I left they 
were all busily engaged in rolling an earthenware 
bowl about, ending its career in a smash. In front 
of the temple the crimson dust round a stake shows 
the spot where every day the blood is shed of a goat 
sacrificed to the Divinity. 

A garden of roses and lilies was the dwelling- 
place of a very ancient fakir, who had taken a vow 

162 



BENAEES 

to live naked, and only put on a loin-cloth when 
ladies were expected. He was venerated by all, yes, 
even by Abibulla, who knelt before him, touched 
the holy man's feet and then his own forehead. 
The old fellow was surrounded by pilgrims wearing 
wreaths of flowers round their neck; he came to 
meet me, took me by the hand, and led me under 
the shade of a kiosk, where he showed me a 
large book he had written, containing an account 
of the joys and ecstasies of his life of asceticism 
and prayer. This old man had a magnificent brow, 
and the deep gaze of his kind, smiling eyes was 
fine in a face puckered with a thousand wrinkles. 
Infinite calm and peace characterized this happy 
soul — a naked man in the midst of flowers. 

At the end of the garden, in a little temple, is 
a statue of the holy man of the size of life, in 
his favourite attitude, sitting on his crossed legs. 
Eound the image were the most absurd toys — and 
a photograph* of the German Emperor! As I was 
leaving, the fakir called me back, asked me to 
think of him sometimes, and gave me one of the 
splendid yellow roses that hung about him like 
a glory. 

Very early in the morning, on emerging from 

163 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the gloom of the narrow streets, there is a sudden 
blaze of glory, the rising sun, purple and gold, 
reflected in the Ganges, the waters throbbing like 
fiery opal. The people hurry to the shore carry- 
ing trays piled high with flowers and offerings. 
The women carry little jars in their hands looking 
like burnished gold, and containing a few drops 
of scented oil to anoint themselves withal after 
bathing. These jars are covered with roses and 
jasmine blossoms, to be sent floating down the 
sacred stream as an offering to the gods. The 
steps are crowded already with the faithful, who 
have waited till Surya the day-star should rise, 
before going through their devotional ablutions. 
With a great hubbub of shouts and cries, and 
laughter and squabbling, this throng pushes and 
hustles, while those unimaginable priests sit stolidly 
under their wicker sunshades, mumbling their 
prayers, and accepting alms and gifts. All along 
the river there are people bathing on the steps 
which go down under the water, the men naked 
all but a loin-cloth, the women wearing long veils 
which they change very cleverly for dry ones 
after their bath, and then wait in the sun till 
their garments are dry enough to carry away. 

In the sacred tank, where Vishnu bathes when 

164 



BETAKES 

he comes on earth, an old woman was standing 
pouring the stagnant green water over her body, 
while others of the faithful, seated on the steps, 
were piously drinking the stuff from a coco-nut 
that they handed round. In one corner of this 
pool was an exquisite bower of floating wreaths 
— yellow, white, and violet — a splash of bright 
colour on the squalid water. 

Below one of the palaces is a huge statue of 
Vishnu Bhin in a reclining attitude, daubed with 
ochre, the face flesh-colour and white; a statue 
which is carried away every year by the floods 
and restored every year in its pristine grossness. 

The palace of the Eajah of ISTagpoor, with its 
two towers, overlooks the river from above a 
broad stairway. A balcony quite at the top is 
supported on a massive cornice lightly carved into 
acanthus leaves. The damp has subdued the red 
colour of the building, fading it especially at the 
base, and from a distance it might be fancied that 
a veil of thin gauze had been hung over the palace, 
and fastened beneath the carved parapet. 

On the bank of the river, where there are no 

more steps, only beaten earth, in a little raised pit 

a pile of wood was slowly dying out. A man with 

165 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

a cane raked back the sticks as they fell and rolled 
away. A squatting crowd were waiting till their 
relation was altogether consumed to cast his ashes 
on the sacred waters. 

Then a girl's body was brought out, wrapped in 
white muslin ; the bier, made of bamboo, was 
wreathed with marigolds, and on the light shroud 
there were patches of crimson powder, almost 
violet. The bearers, on reaching the river, placed 
the body in the water, leaving it there for a time. 

A little way off an old man was wrapping the 

naked body of a poor woman in a white cloth ; 

then he fastened it to two poles to dip it in the 

river; finally, with the help of another Sudra, he 

laid the corpse on a meagre funeral pile, and went 

off to fetch some live charcoal from the sacred 

fire which the Brahmins perpetually keep alive 

on a stone terrace overlooking the G-anges. He 

carried the scrap of burning wood at the end of 

a bunch of reeds, and, praying aloud, walked five 

times round the pyre, which completely concealed 

the body. Then he gently waved the bunch of 

reeds, making them blaze up, and placed them 

beneath the wood, which slowly caught fire, sending 

up dense curling clouds of white vapour and slender 

tongues of flame, creeping along the damp logs that 

166 



BENAEES 

seemed to go out again immediately. But sud- 
denly the fire flared up to the top of the pile ; the 
flesh hissed in the flame, and filled the air with a 
sickening smell. 

The maiden was placed on a very high pile of 
saplings and dry crackling boughs. Her father 
fetched the sacred fire, and then, with the same 
ceremonials and prayers, set light to the wood, 
which flashed up in a golden glow with a sweet 
odour. The flame rose clear against the sky for a 
long time before the smell of her burnt flesh mingled 
with that of the poor woman, whose limbs, under 
the action of the heat, seemed to stretch to an 
inordinate length. One arm, sticking out from the 
fire, seemed to clench its fist, which was bright 
yellow, as if it would clutch at something; and 
then all was consumed — the wood pile fell in, the 
skull cracking with a dull snap, and nothing was 
left but a heap of embers, into which the atten- 
dants raked the cinders that rolled down the 
sloping bank. 

The old woman's bones and ashes were cast into 

the Ganges, her husband still vacantly looking on, 

as all that was left of his life's companion floated 

for a few moments, and then was swallowed up in 

an eddy. 

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ENCHANTED INDIA 

On the remains of the pyre was placed a corpse 
of spectral emaciation, which had been lying at 
the top of the bank since the day before for its 
turn, as a pauper, to be cremated at the cost of 
the municipality. The head alone was wrapped 
in a wretched rag, and creeping flies formed a 
cuirass on the dark skin, already torn in places 
by the kites. Petroleum was poured over the 
hapless body, and it flared up with the wood in 
a livid pink and green blaze, sending up a cloud 
of acrid red smoke. 

And so on, in an endless file, come the bodies 
of the faithful dead, some from long distances, so 
that their souls may rise at once to paradise from 
their ashes burnt on the Manumenka. 

A dome of smoke hangs like a vault over the 
fires, motionless, veiling the sun. The relations 
of the dead, sitting on their heels, gaze at the 
flames with an expression almost of indifference; 
no one weeps, and they converse calmly in no 
subdued tones. 

The pile of the girl with marigold wreaths and 

the shroud stained crimson and purple flung her 

ashes to the winds, reduced to mere atoms of bone 

and light cinder, and the servants of the place 

drowned a few still glowing sticks in the river; 

168 



BENAEES 

the family and friends slowly went up the yellow 
stone steps and disappeared through a gateway 
leading into the town. 

The attendants threw water on the pauper's 
pyre, and then with their long bamboos pushed 
the mass of burnt wood and flesh into the Ganges, 
where it looked like some enormous black frog with 
a white patch for the head. 

They shoved it under water, but it presently 
rose to the surface and floated down the stream, 
followed by a flock of hawks that snatched at 
the burnt remains and fought over them in the 
air, while crocodiles below swam up and snapped 
at them, dragging them down in their enormous 
jaws, which appeared for a moment above the 
water. 

By the side of the Manumenka stand two stelae, 
on which two carved figures, represented as sur- 
rounded by flames, preserve the memory of the 
time when the funeral pyre consumed the living 
wife with the dead husband. 

In the town, at a spot where several alleys meet, 
stood a mob of people holding out the ends of 
their sarees or dhotis to catch handfuls of grain 
which a kshatriya was throwing to them from a 

169 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

window, though he looked almost as ragged as the 
beggars collected in front of the house. 

Close to a shop where I was bargaining for some 
old bronzes, in an open booth, and quite alone 
among the metal jars and trays, sat a boy of four, 
his only garment a green silk jacket bordered 
with blue velvet, stitched with silver thread ; there 
was nothing between the little vest and his bright 
bronze skin. He had a blue cap embroidered with 
gold, and his eyes were darkened with khol. He 
was drawing lines very neatly on a slate, and then 
wrote beneath them the pretty Hindoo letters that 
look like cabalistic signs, saying them as he went 
on, 'pa, pa, pa, pi, pi, pi, pa/i, pai, pa/l, pom, pom, pom, 
till at last, seeing that I was looking at him and 
smiling, quite fascinated by his pretty ways, he 
burst out laughing, a hearty, happy, baby laugh, 
and then gravely went on with his business 
again. 

Then, under a portico in front of us, a man 

began to undress. He threw off his dhoti and 

his sarong, keeping on his loin-cloth only. With 

outstretched arms he placed a heavy copper pot 

full of water on the ground, took it up between 

170 



BENARES 

his teeth, and without using his hands tilted his 
head back till the water poured all over him in 
a shower, which splashed up from the pavement, 
sprinkling the spectators in the front row. Next 
he tied his dhoti round the jar, which he refilled, 
and fastened the end to his long hair. Then, 
simply by turning his head, he spun the heavy 
pot round him. It looked as if it must pull his 
head off, but he flung it faster and faster till he 
presently stopped. 

There were people performing their devotional 
ablutions below stream from the place of burning, 
and one old man took a few drops of water in 
the hollow of his hand and drank it, quite close 
to a shapeless black mass at which a kite was 
pecking as it floated by. 

At sunset, when the glow fired the stones to a 

semblance of transparent, burning light, at the top 

of one of the flights of steps rising from the river 

to the town, and in front of a gate with large 

brass nails, glittering like sparks, the figure 

appeared of a holy beggar in yellow rags, with a 

copper jar blazing with reflected light ; he was 

set in a halo of gold, and looked like the vision 

of some pagan god. He stood motionless for a 

171 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

long time, and then, as the last sunbeam went 
out, he vanished beyond the fire-studded gate, 
while all the scene faded into rosy lilac, rapidly 
dying into blue night. 

A distant noise of tom-toms — big drums thump- 
ing out minims in the bass, small ones rattling 
out semiquavers in very short, sharp notes ; and to 
this accompaniment came the sharp trill of a 
metal flute. The music came nearer at a brisk 
pace, heralded by two tall baggage camels, a rare 
sight in Benares, where the streets are so narrow 
and straight, and only foot passengers are to be 
seen. Then followed saddle-horses, led by hand, 
and a large number of men on foot, and after 
an interval there appeared a band, atrociously out 
of tune, immediately in front of a palankin hung 
with a shawl embroidered all over in palms of 
different shades of gold and beads. In this sat 
a little bridegroom of eight, dressed in pale yellow 
satin, a wreath of marigolds round his neck, and 
above his turban a cap made of jasmine, the ends 
hanging all round his head — a little bridegroom, 
eight years old, very solemn, sitting cross-legged 
with a huge bouquet in his hand, and facing him 
his two little brothers in white silk and necklaces 

of jasmine. 

172 



BENARES 

In the evening the priest would say prayers 
over the couple — the bride being probably about 
five — and the bridegroom would stay with the 
little bride's parents. Next day she would spend 
with the boy's parents, and after that they would 
both go back to their lessons and probably never 
meet again, unless they were very near neighbours, 
till he, having attained the age of fifteen, they 
would be really married. 

The Maharajah of Benares sent his carriage this 
morning to take me to him. We went to the 
Ganges, where a palankin was in waiting to carry 
me across the narrow strip of sand between the 
road and the boat, escorted by a worthy who held 
a tall red umbrella, fringed with gold, over my 
head. 

The barge was screened by a crimson awning 
and rowed by four men in red. The water, a 
broad sheet of silky sheen, seemed motionless, and 
in the distance, under a soft, powdery haze, Benares 
showed like a mass of dim gold, the two slender 
minarets of Aurungzeeb's mosque towering above 
the town. 

We landed at Eamnagar, a marble palace look- 
ing like a fortified town, its massive walls rising 

173 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

from the river and crowned by balconies and fairy- 
kiosks — a lacework of stone against the brilliant 
sky. 

A crowd of servants in red came down the 
flight of steps to the landing-place, and stood on 
each side, while at the top the Maharajah stood 
to receive me, in a tunic of yellow brocaded with 
silver, and silk trousers of various shades of violet 
and gold tissue; his turban was quite small, with 
an aigrette and a spray of diamonds. 

From the open loggia at the end of the vast 
reception-room, lined with white marble and hung 
with thick carpets, there was an extensive view 
over the green plain inundated with water and 
sunshine to the holy city of dazzling domes that 
looked as if they had just risen from the Ganges. 
The air was full of heady fragrance ; the Eajah 
described the springtide festivals, barges carrying 
troupes of dancing bayaderes on the Ganges spark- 
ling with a myriad lights. 

Instead of the usual wreath of flowers for my neck 

the Eajah gave me a necklace of silver threads, to 

which hung a little bag of purple and green silk, 

closely embroidered, and looking like a scent-sachet, 

or a bag to hold some precious amulet. 

We drove across a succession of parks to visit 

174 



BENARES 

Sumer Mundir, a too elaborately carved temple, the 
panels representing scenes from the Ramayana set 
in ornamental borders. On the roof, which bristled 
with sculptured stone, thousands of blue pigeons 
were perched asleep, their iridescent plumage scarcely 
stirring in the sunshine. Beyond a tank at the end 
of the park was a palace in the Arab style with 
incredibly delicate ornaments of wrought marble, 
open halls painted in subdued colouring, and lighted 
by the golden reflections from the water. The pool 
had steps all round it, in which crowds seat them- 
selves on the occasions of pilgrimage, and far away 
the enchanting vision of Benares, the holy city, in 
every shade of amber and honey. 

Then into a garden with a number of quite narrow, 
straight paths bordered with nasturtiums, tall 
daisies, and geraniums, while a tangle of jasmine, 
china roses, bougainvillea, and poinsettia flourished 
freely under the shade of tamarind and palm trees. 
Over a clump of orange trees in blossom a cloud of 
butterflies was flitting, white patterned with black 
above, and cloisonnes beneath in red and yellow 
with fine black outlines. 

As we returned past a village — a hamlet of 

houses gathering round a well surmounted by a 

kiosk shading a gaudy idol crowned with red 

175 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

pinks — a perfectly naked fakir, his straight black 
hair bound twice round his head like a turban, stood 
basking in the sun, leaning against a wall, and 
chanting in a rapid monotone, while two babies, 
under the shade of a fan-palm leaf, stared up at 
him and sucked their thumbs. 

Then the sunset, in the furnace of heavy purple 
and red, reflected in the water in fiery copper- 
colour streaked with violet, till soon it all faded 
together, to gold, to lemon-colour; the mist rising 
from the river spread over all the country, and 
everything looked the same in the cloudless gloom. 
One quarter of the sky glowed faintly, through the 
haze a crimson globe rose into view, the moon 
appeared, and soon lighted up all the sky with a 
soft greenish glow, pallid but deep, lying on the 
tranquil Ganges in broad rippling sheets of gold and 
green, spangled with light where a fish leaped, or 
a white bird dipped its wing as it skimmed swiftly 
across without a sound. The gold grew cold and 
dead, the moon turned to steel against the intensely 
blue sky, to cold blue steel on the lustrous face of 
the waters. 

We went into the observatory, where the ser- 
vants were sleeping in the open air on camp beds, 
lying across each other and blocking the entrance. 

176 



BENAEES 

I went to gaze at the north star, looking very 
small, a tiny spangle of blue in the blue velvet 
sky, visible at the top of a crazy flight of steps 
that goes up to nowhere in the air from the top- 
most terrace. 

Down in the streets the houses looked ghostly 
blue in the moonlight, the cross roads, lighted with 
the warmer glow of a few lamps in red paper 
shades, alternating with the black darkness, in 
which it was just possible to discern cows and goats 
lying on the ground. 

Near a temple some bells and tom-toms animated 
the silence with their clang and clatter. Wor- 
shippers stole in noiselessly, barefoot on the stones, 
and entered the sanctuary, within which tapers 
were burning. 

Further away, in another quite small temple, a 
young Brahmin robed in white, and very handsome, 
was reading the Eamayana to two women ; the three 
quite filled the little building. The entrance was 
screened by a curtain composed of jasmine flowers 
threaded on fine string, and behind this veil of 
flowers the three figures looked like the creatures 
of a legend. Outside the sanctuary, seated on the 
steps and flagstones and obstructing the street, 
were a score or so of women redolent of lemon and 
N 177 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

sandal-wood, and listening to the scripture distinctly 
chanted out by the young priest. 

In the street were bayaderes, and women at 
every window, the pretty faces brightly illuminated, 
the plainer in a skilfully subdued light. The sound 
of tom-toms and pipes could be heard, and the 
guttural, quavering song of a dancing beauty 
performing for some amateur; quite young boys 
were wandering about the street, almost children, 
all in white. Where the roads met, a mosque was 
illuminated in honour of this month of Eamadan, 
and the believers were trooping out in a crowd. 

A woman on the river-bank was flinging into the 
water, with devout unction, scraps of paper on 
which the name of Eama was written, rolled up in 
a paste made of flour. Not far from her another 
woman was praying ; she stopped to wash her 
copper cooking-pots, then prayed again ; gave her 
baby a bath, and then, squatting on the lowest step, 
prayed once more, and for a long time, after which 
she picked up her pots and her little one and went 
her way. 

On the shore, on the steps in front of the temples 
and round the holy images, in short, everywhere on 

this day, red powder was sprinkled to inaugurate 

178 



BENARES 

the month just beginning ; a beggar, to secure the 
favour of the gods, had smeared his head and hands 
with it. 

And once more in a barge on the Ganges. The 
atmosphere seemed faintly iridescent, like mother- 
of-pearl, the silence serenely lulled by the distant 
sound of a flute. The palaces and temples, reflected 
in the still water, looked in the distance like forts 
crowned with turrets of gold, and their little 
windows like loopholes. The broad stairs of the 
quays, where the priests' umbrellas glitter, assumed 
a spacious, unfamiliar dignity, the red colour shading 
paler towards the bottom, where it was washed off 
by the lapping Ganges, looking as though a fairy 
hanging of gauze were spread under the wavelets 
in honour of the Apsaras and the divinities of the 
river. 

A kshatriya, a very old man, had seen me yester- 
day returning from Ramnagar with my necklet of 
silver threads. Convinced by this that I must 
be "a Europe Eajah," he tormented me to grant 
him a title. He wanted to be Eaj Bahadur; this 
was the height of his ambition. After following 
me about the bazaar all the morning, he sat for a 

long time in my room. So, to get rid of him, seeing 

179 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

that he persisted in hoping that I should call him 
Eaj Bahadur, I did so ; this, however, did not satisfy 
him : I must write it down on paper. At last I 
consented. Quite delighted now, he went off to 
shout the words to his friends, who had been 
waiting for him in the garden, and then, very 
solemn, and conscious of his new dignity, he dis- 
appeared down the road. 

At the station pilgrims again, bewildered, shout- 
ing, rushing about in search of their lost luggage. 
One group presently emerged from the crowd, led 
by a man bareheaded, who rang a big bell with 
great gesticulations, his arms in the air, and the 
whole party marched off towards the temples in 
silent and orderly procession. 

Then, from a bridge across the Ganges, for a 
moment we had a last glimpse of the sacred city — 
the gold-coloured umbrellas, the throng of bathers 
on the steps to the river — and then AbibuUa 
gravely remarked, " If only India had three cities 
like Benares it would be impossible ever to leave 
it." 



180 



ALLAHABAD 



ALLAHABAD 

In a wonderful garden, amazing after the sandy 
waste that lies between Benares and Allahabad — a 
garden of beds tilled with flowers showing no leaves, 
but closely planted so as to form a carpet of delicate, 
blending hues — stand three mausoleums, as large 
as cathedrals, in the heart of cool silence, the tombs 
of the Sultan Purvez, of his father Khusru, and of 
his wife, the Begum Chasira. 

High in the air, in the first mausoleum, at the 
head and foot of the white marble cenotaph, covered 
with letters that look like creepers, are tablets bear- 
ing inscriptions which record the life of the hero ; 
and above the sarcophagus rises an almost im- 
possibly light and airy structure — a canopy of 
white marble supported on columns as slender as 
flower-stems. 

In the Begum's tomb the sarcophagus is on the 
ground, surrounded by a pale-tinted mosaic pave- 
ment. The windows, screened by pierced stone, 
admit a rosy light, and the walls are painted to 
imitate Persian tiles, with tall Cyprus trees in blue 

and green. Incense was burning in one corner, the 

181 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

perfume mingling with that of the flowers, wafted 
in at every opening. Doors of massive cedar, carved 
with the patience of a bygone time, rattle on their 
hinges as the wind slams them to, but still endure, 
uninjured by ages. 

There was nobody in the garden of the mauso- 
leums, not even the usual obsequious and mendicant 
attendant. Only by the tomb of Purvez a moollah 
was kneeling in prayer, motionless, and wrapped in 
some very light white material, which the wind 
gently stirred and blew up. All the time I was 
examining the mausoleums he prayed on, prostrate, 
immovable ; and even from afar, from the road, I 
could see him still, like a stone among the marble 
work, at the feet of the hero who sleeps his last in 
mid-air. 

The fort of Allahabad, the fort of the mutiny of 

1857, is a complete citadel where, in the thickness 

of the walls, behind screens of acacia trees, lurk 

doors into palaces. Among the gardens there are 

clearings full of guns and ambulance waggons, and 

enormous barracks and huts for native soldiers. 

Then on the ponderous stonework of the ramparts 

rise little kiosks in the light Hindoo -Mussulman 

style, elaborate and slender, built by Akbar the con- 

182 



ALLAHABAD 

queror, who took Prayag and razed it, to build on 
the site a city dedicated to Allah. And now modern 
architecture is slowly invading it, adding to the 
flat walls which hide under their monotony the 
gems of stonework with their elegant decoration. 

From the parapet of one of the bastions the 
Ganges may be seen in the distance, of a sickly 
turquoise-blue, shrouded in the haze of dust which 
hangs over everything and cuts off the horizon almost 
close in front of us, and the tributary Jumna, trans- 
lucent and green. At the confluence of the rivers 
stands a native village of straw and bamboo huts, 
swept away every season by the rains. This is 
Triveni, containing 50,000 souls, which enjoys a 
great reputation for sanctity, and attracts almost 
as many pilgrims from every part of India as does 
Benares. The people come to wash away their sins 
in the Saravasti, the mystical river that comes down 
from heaven and mingles its waters at this spot with 
those of the sacred Ganges and the Jumna. The 
faithful who bathe at Triveni observe an additional 
ceremony and cut their hair ; each hair, as it floats 
down stream in the sacred waters, effaces a sin, and 
obtains its forgiveness. In front of the barracks, 
a relic of past magnificence, there stands alone on 

a porphyry pedestal, in the middle of a broad plot 

183 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

trampled by soldiers on parade, an Asoka column 
carved with inscriptions to the top, and decorated 
half-way up with a sort of capital. 

Fakirs, holding out their begging -bowls as they 
squatted round an opening in the ground, showed that 
it was the entrance to a temple ; a few steps down, 
a long corridor with little niches on each side, and 
then hall after hall full of grimacing gods, lighted 
up by our guide's torch, till at last we reached an 
immense vault where impenetrable darkness filled 
the angles lost in a labyrinth of arcades converging 
to some mystery. Here all the Hindoo gods, carved 
in stone, have been crowded together, with their 
horrible contortions, their stolid beatitude, their 
affected grace ; and in their midst is a huge idol, 
hacked with a great cut by Aurungzeeb, the Moslem 
emperor, at the time of his conquest. Suddenly 
all about us was a crowd of Brahmins, appearing 
from what dark corners we could not discover. 
They looked nasty and half asleep, and vanished at 
once with a murmur of whispered speech that hung 
about the galleries in an echo. 

At the entrance into one of the chapels is the 
trunk of an Akshai bar or bo tree, a kind of fig 
such as the Buddhists place in front of their sanc- 
tuaries. The tree is living in the subterranean 

184 



LUCKNOW 

vault, and after thrusting its head through the 
heavy layer of stones forming the roof of the temple, 
it spreads its branches under the light of day. 
Endless absurd legends have grown up about the 
mystery of this tree, which is said to be no less 
than twenty centuries old ; and my guide, who talks 
aloud in the presence of the idols he despises, being 
a Mohammedan, bows reverently to the tree and 
murmurs, " That is sacred ; God has touched it." 



LUCKNOW 

A vision of Europe. Cottages surrounded by 

lawns under the shade of tall trees, and against the 

green the scarlet coats of English soldiers walking 

about. And close about the houses, as if dropped 

there by chance, tombs covered with flagstones and 

enclosed by railings, and on all the same date, June 

or July, 1857. Further away, under the trees, are 

heaps of stones and bricks, the ruins of mosques and 

forts, hardly visible now amid the roots and briars 

that look like the flowery thickets of a park, varied 

by knolls to break the monotony of the level sward. 

In the native town that has grown up on the site 

of the palace of Nana Sahib, built indeed of the 

185 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

ruins of its departed splendour, dwell a swarm of 
pariahs, who dry their rags and hang out clothes 
and reed screens over every opening, living there 
without either doors or windows, in utter indifference 
to the passer-by. 

Opposite a large tank, where a tall column rises 
from the water in memory of the victims of the 
Mutiny, and where a party of the votaries of Siva 
are performing their pious ablutions, a building 
stands in the Hindoo-Jesuit style of architecture. 
It is heavy, with white carvings above its pink 
paint, and with columns supporting turrets crowned 
with large lion-faces, the masks only, in the Indian 
manner, daylight showing through the jaws and 
eyes, and the profiles absurd, shapeless, and un- 
meaning. This is the college of La Martiniere. 

In the chapel of the building through which 
I passed to go down to the tomb of La Martiniere, 
two students, seated American fashion, with their 
feet on the back of the bench in front of them, 
were reading the Times of India and smoking 
cigarettes. 

In the circular marble crypt there is a large 
cracked bell, inscribed " Lieutenant- Colonel Martin, 
1788," also a bust of the corporal, and, in an 
adjoining cell, the tomb of Colonel Martin, who, 

186 



LUCKNOW 

having left his native town of Lyons for Pondi- 
cherry, after having painfully worked his way up 
to the grade of corporal in the French king's army, 
departed from thence and travelled to Oudh. There 
as a favourite of the Moslem king's and general- 
issimo of his troops, he amassed a large fortune, 
and spent it in building the palaces and colleges 
which perpetuate his name in several towns in 
India. He was an eccentric adventurer, whom 
some now remember here, and whose name pro- 
nounced in the Indian fashion, with a broad accent 
on the a, suggests an almost ironical meaning in 
conjunction with the idea of a college. 

By the side of the road, in the town, the walls 
are still standing, all that remains of a great hall 
in the palace of Secundra Bagh, in which, after the 
suppression of the Mutiny in 1857, two thousand 
sepoys who refused to surrender were put to death. 

And at this day the high road passes Secundra 
Bagh in ruins, and on the ground where Nana 
Sahib's soldiers fell, huge flowers are strewn of 
"flame of the forest" fading into hues of blood. 

In the middle of a garden, full of clumps of 
flowering shrubs standing on green lawns, is the 
ISTadjiff Ackraff, a vast rotunda crowned with gilt 

187 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

cupolas and spires, and all round the building is an 
arcade built in a square and studded with iron pins 
on which thousands of wax lights are stuck on the 
evenings of high festivals. 

Inside the mausoleum numberless lustres hang 
from the roof, and fine large standing lamps with 
crystal pendants burn round two tombs covered 
with antique hangings and wreathed with jasmine ; 
beneath these lie the two last kings of Oudh. 
Small models of two famous mosques, one in gold 
and one in silver, are placed on the tombs, round 
which a whole regiment of obsequious mooUahs and 
beggars mount guard. On the walls childish paint- 
ings, representing scenes of the Anglo - Indian 
conflict, alternate with mirrors in gilt frames, and 
silk standards exquisitely faded, embroidered with 
dim gold and silver, and surmounted by tridents. 

Here, once more, is the spectre of the mutiny 
that broke out in the Eesidency, of which the ruins 
may be seen in the middle of a park intersected by 
watercourses, the English flag still proudly waving 
over them. 

The gateway looks as if it had been carved by 

the dints of bullets in the stone, and close by, 

a breach in the huge enclosing wall scored all over 

by shot gave ingress to the murderous host. Inside, 

188 



CAWNPORE 

on the walls that are left standing, and they are 
many, the bullets seem to have scrawled strange 
characters. In the bath-house with its graceful 
columns and arabesque ornaments, in Dr. Fayrer's 
house, of which the proportions remind us of 
Trianon, where Sir Henry Lawrence died among 
the ruins of the mosque — everywhere, we see tab- 
lets of black marble commemorating the numerous 
victims of the rebellion. In one barrack two hun- 
dred and forty-five women and children were mur- 
dered ; in another forty-five officers were buried in 
the ruins. And close by the scene of carnage, in 
a smiling cemetery, their graves hidden in flowers, 
under the shadow of the English flag that flies from 
the summit of the ruined tower which formerly 
commanded the country round, sleep the nine hun- 
dred and twenty -seven victims of N"ana Sahib's 
treachery. 

CAWNPORE 

Here, even more than at Lucknow, are the 

memories of 1857 — columns and tombs ; and on 

the spot where the last victims who had trusted 

him were murdered by the orders of the Indian 

prince, stands the " Memorial," an arcade sur- 

189 



E:N"CHA]SrTED INDIA 

rounding the figure of an angel, which in its 
Christmas - card sentimentality suggests the apo- 
theosis of a fairy drama, and has the arid lack 
of feeling that characterizes a monochrome figure 
in vulgar decoration, almost counteracting the pity 
we experience in the presence of the simpler tombs 
— all bearing the same date, June, 1857. 

By the roadside came two figures tottering along, 
and then, turning to look at me, showed me the 
horror of their shrivelled bodies, their dimmed eyes 
— all that seemed alive in those drawn faces of 
skin and bone — the jaw stiffened in a skull-like 
grimace ; victims of the famine, who had come 
from the Central Provinces where there had been 
no rain for two years, and where everything was 
dying. This couple were making their way to a 
poorhouse hard by. They had come from a village 
in Bundelkund, whence all the inhabitants had fled 
— themselves the sole survivors of a family of 
eighteen souls. First the children died, then the 
very old folks. These two had kept themselves 
alive on what had been given them on the way, 
but immigrants soon were too many in the districts 
un visited by famine, and ere long they could get 
nothing; then they fed on roots, on what they 

190 



CAWNPOEE 

could steal from fields or garden-plots, or found 
left to rot, scorned even by the beasts. 

They were clad in colourless rags, matted and 
grizzled hair hung about their pain- stricken faces. 
The woman was the more delicate, her bones smaller 
and less knotted than those of the man, whose 
joints were gnarled, his scraggy knees forming 
thick bosses of bone above his shins. They threw 
themselves like hungry animals on some cooked 
grain which Abibulla brought out for them, and 
then, with scared looks all round, they went quickly 
away, as quickly as they could with halting, weary 
feet, without even saying thank-you. 

The poorhouse is about two miles from the 
city; it consists of a courtyard enclosed by walls, 
from which awnings are stretched supported on 
poles. And here from twelve to fifteen hundred 
wretched skeletons had found shelter, spectres with 
shoulder-blades almost cutting through the skin, 
arms shrunk to the bone, with the elbow- joint like 
a knot in the middle, and at the end hands which 
looked enormous and flat and limp, as if every 
knuckle were dislocated. Their gnarled knees pro- 
jected from the fearful leanness of their legs, and 
the tightened skin between the starting ribs showed 

the hollow pit of the stomach. Men and women 

191 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

alike were for the most part naked, but for a ragged 
cotton loin-cloth. And all had the same scared 
look in their eyes, the same grin of bare teeth 
between those hollow cheeks. Almost all had 
bleeding wounds where the bones had come through 
the skin. 

Such as were able to work at making rope or 
straw mats earned an anna a day, the children 
half an anna. This was extra to their food, a cake 
of gram flour, which was all the allowance for 
twenty-four hours. But among those admitted 
to the poorhouse about a quarter of the number 
were unable to work. In a similar but smaller 
enclosure adjacent was the infirmary, a hospital 
with no physician, no remedies. The shrunken 
creatures lay shivering in the sun, huddled under 
rags of blanket. All were moaning, many were 
unconscious, wandering in delirium, shrieking, and 
writhing. One man, too weak to stand, came up 
grovelling on his hands and knees, taking me for 
a doctor, and beseeching me to go to his wife who 
was lying over there, and by her a dusky moist 
rag as it seemed — her very inside purged out by 
dysentery. 

Near her was another woman, gone mad, dancing, 

her skeleton limbs contorted in a caricature of 

192 



CAWNPOEE 

grace ; and a child of some few months, like an 
undeveloped abortion, of the colour of a new penny, 
with a large head rolling on a neck reduced to the 
thickness of the vertebrae, and arms and legs no 
larger than knitting-pins, but, in a sort of mockery, 
the swollen belly of the fever-stricken. The eyes 
blinked in the little wrinkled face, seeking some- 
thing in vacancy; it tried to cry, but the only 
sound was a feeble croak. 

One boy, who being very tall looked even more 
emaciated than the rest, dragged an enormous leg 
swollen with elephantiasis, which had not diminished 
with the reduction of the rest of his body. 

" And is there no doctor ? " 

"He comes now and then," said the baboo, who 
was our guide ; but on my pressing the question 
this "now and then" remained vague, no day or 
week could be named. 

" And no medicine ? " 

" We give rice to the sick, who all have dysentery, 
instead of the daily cake." 

"And is that all?" 

"But rice is very good, and it is very dear, and 
some of them have been ill for three weeks." 

" And how many die every day ? " 

"Five — six," said the baboo, hesitating; then, 
o 193 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

seeing that I was quite incredulous, " Sometimes 
more," he added. 

Further away was one of the famine-camps — 
established all over India — to afford the means of 
earning a living to those whom the scourge had 
driven from their native provinces. 

Two or three thousand haggard and fleshless 
beings were digging or carrying earth to form an 
embankment for a railway or a road. With arms 
scarcely thicker than the handles of the tools they 
wielded, the labourers gasped in the air, tired in a 
minute, and pausing to rest in spite of the abuse 
of the overseers. Emaciated women, so small in 
their tattered sarees, carried little baskets on their 
heads containing a few handfuls of earth, but 
which they could scarcely lift. One of them, 
wrinkled and shrunken, looked a hundred years 
old tottering under her load ; on reaching the spot 
where she was to empty out the soil, she leaned 
forward a little and let the whole thing fall, 
indifferent to the dust which covered her and filled 
her mouth and eyes ; and after taking breath for 
a moment, off she went again as if walking in her 
sleep. 

The men are paid as much as two annas (one 
penny) a day. The women earn ten, seven, or three 

194 



CAWNPORE 

cowries (shells at the rate of about 190 to the 
anna) for each basket -load, according to the 
distance, and could make as much as an anna a 
day. But each of these toilers had to support 
many belongings who could not work, and squatted 
about the camp in their desolate and pitiable 
misery. And the food was insufficient for any 
of them, only hindering the poor creatures from 
dying at once. 

The baboo who has lost caste and been half- 
civilized in the Anglo-Indian colleges, is always 
the middleman between the Government and the 
poor; and he, barefaced and with no pretence of 
concealment, took twenty per cent, of the wages 
he was supposed to pay the labourers. And there 
were none but baboos to superintend the poor- 
houses and the famine-camps. It is said that 
during the previous famine some made fortunes of 
six to eight lacs of rupees (the lac is £10,000). 

These gentlemen of the Civil Service would put 
in an appearance "now and then" — the eternal 
"now and then" that answers every question in 
India. They stepped out of a buggy, walked quickly 
round, had seen, and were gone again in a great 
hurry to finish some important work for the next 
European mail. 

195 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

And of all the victims of the disaster those I had 
just seen were not the most to be pitied. It was on 
families of high caste, men who might not work and 
whose wives must be kept in seclusion, that the 
famine weighed most cruelly. At first they 
borrowed money (and the rate of interest recognized 
and tolerated here is seventy-five per cent.), then 
they sold all they could sell. Bereft of every 
resource, unable to earn anything in any way, 
regarding the famine as an inevitable infliction by 
the incensed gods, they let themselves starve to 
death in sullen pride, shut up in their houses with 
their womankind. Thus they were the most diffi- 
cult to rescue. Their unassailable dignity made 
them refuse what they would have regarded as 
charity, even to save the life of those dearest to 
them, and it needed the angelic craft of the women 
of the Zenana Mission to induce the kshatriyas to 
accept the smallest sum to keep themselves alive. 

Grain was now at five times the usual price, and 
would continue to rise till the next harvest-time. 
Official salaries and the wages of the poor remained 
fixed, and misery was spreading, gaining ground on 
all sides of the devastated districts. 

A few officers, a few clergy only, had organized 

some distribution of relief ; the administration, 

196 



CAWNPOEE 

wholly indifferent, was drawing double pay in 
consideration of the increase of work in famine 
time. 

The road from Cawnpore to Gwalior makes a 
bend towards central India across a stony, barren 
tract, where a sort of leprosy of pale lichen has 
overgrown the white dust on the fields that are 
no longer tilled. There is no verdure; mere skeletons 
of trees, and a few scattered palms still spread their 
leaves, protecting under their shade clumps of 
golden gynerium. 

As we approached Jhansi we passed a village 
whence all the inhabitants had fled. The houses, 
the little temples, the gods on their pedestals by 
the dried-up tanks — everything was thickly coated 
with white dust. 

Through the half-open doors in the courtyards 
bones were bleaching, almost buried under the fine 
powder that lies on everything. And from this 
dust, as we trod it, rose a sharp smell of pepper and 
smoke. Twisted branches drooped forlorn from the 
skeletons of a few trees that were left standing. 
Parasitic creepers had woven a flowing robe of 
tangle over a statue of Kali, left unbroken in front 
of a small temple in ruins ; and all over the withered 

197 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

and faded growth the fine white dust had settled 
in irregular patterns, a graceful embroidery rather 
thicker in the folds. 

There was not a living thing in the silence and 
overheated air — not a bird, not a fly; and beyond 
the houses lay the plain once more, a monotonous 
stretch of dead whiteness, the unspeakable desola- 
tion of murderous nature, henceforth for ever 
barren. 

At Jhansi, by the station, were parties of famish- 
ing emigrants, all with the same dreadful white 
grimace and glazed eyes, and in the town more 
starving creatures dragging their suffering frames 
past the shops — almost all closed — or begging at 
the doors of the temples and mosques ; and the few 
passers-by hurried on as if they, too, wanted to 
escape, overpowered by this scene of dread and 
horror. 

The train, now travelling northwards again, ran 
for a long way across the scorched plain through 
groves of dead trees and sandhills covered with 
lichen, till, in the golden sunset close to Gwalior, 
suddenly, at the foot of a hill, we came upon the 
greenery of fine parks with palaces rising above 
cool marble tanks. 



198 



GWALIOR 



GWALIOR 

A giant rock and natural fortress command the 
plain, towering above the garden-land. Two roads, 
hewn in the stone, lead by easy ascents to the top. 
All along the rock wall bas-reliefs are carved, 
warriors riding on elephants, and Kalis in graceful 
attitudes. There are openings to the green depths 
of reservoirs, small temples, arcades sheltering idols 
bowered in fresh flowers. Arches in the Jain style 
of architecture span the road, and at the summit, 
beyond the inevitable drawbridge, stands Mandir, 
the palace of King Pal, a dazzling structure of 
yellow stone, looking as if it had grown on the hill- 
rock that it crowns with beauty. Towers carry- 
ing domed lanterns spring skywards above the 
massive walls. The decoration is playfully light, 
carvings alternating with inlaid tiles ; and all 
round the lordly and solemn edifice wheels a pro- 
cession of blue ducks on a yellow ground in earthen- 
ware. 

Under the archway by which we entered a cow 

crossed our path, her head decked with a tiara of 

peacock's feathers, and went her way alone for a 

199 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

walk at an easy pace. Within the palace is a maze 
of corridors, and pierced carving round every room 
fretting the daylight. An inner court is decorated 
with earthenware panels set in scroll-work of stone. 
A slender colonnade in white marble is relieved 
against the yellow walls, and below the roof, in 
the subdued light of the deeper angles, the stone, 
the marble, the porcelain, take hues of sapphire, 
topaz, and enamel, reflections as of gold and mother- 
of-pearl. In a pavilion is a little divan within 
three walls, all pierced and carved; it suggests a 
hollow pearl with its sides covered with embroidery 
that dimly shows against the sheeny smoothness 
of the marble. The effect is so exquisitely soft, 
so indescribably harmonious, that the idea of size 
is lost, and the very materials seem transfigured 
into unknown substances. One has a sense as of 
being in some fairy palace, enclosed in a gem 
excavated by gnomes — a crystal of silk and frost, 
as it were, bright with its own light. 

The rock is girt with a belt of walls, and in the 

citadel, besides Mandir, with its outbuildings and 

tanks, there is a whole town of palaces and temples, 

which are being demolished little by little to make 

way for barracks. 

200 



GWALTOR 

In front of these stolid -looking sepoys, their 
black heads and hands conspicuous in their yellow 
uniforms, are drilled to beat of drum, marking 
every step and movement. 

Adinath, a Jain temple, is roofed with huge 
blocks of stone. The airy architecture is a medley 
of balconies, of pierced panels, of arcades in squares, 
in lozenges, in octagons ; the two stories, one above 
the other, are on totally different plans, and along 
every wall, on every column and every balustrade 
runs a fatiguing superfluity of ornament, figures 
and arabesques repeated on the stone, of which not 
an inch is left plain. 

The roof, upheld by a double row of stone blocks 
set on end, and somewhat atilt, weighs on the 
building, which is already giving way ; and the next 
monsoon will destroy this marvel of the Jain to 
spare the trouble of military constructors — the 
builders of barracks. 

Another temple, Sas Bahu, likewise elaborately 
carved under a roof too heavy for it, has a terrace 
overhanging the hill, whence there is a view over 
Lashkar, the new palace, gleaming white among the 
huge trees of the park. 

At our feet lay old Gwalior, sacked again and 

again, and as often rebuilt out of its own ruins; 

201 



EITCHANTED INDIA 

and now the princely residences, all of marble 
wrought in almost transparent lacework, serve to 
shelter wandering cattle. 

One mosqne alone, a marvel of workmanship, its 
stones pierced with a thousand patterns, remains 
intact amid the Indian dwellings built, all round 
the sacred spot, of the remains of ancient magnifi- 
cence, of which, ere long, nothing will be left 
standing. 

A fortified wall encloses Lashkar, the residence 
of the Maharajah of Gwalior; the bridges, which 
form part of the enclosure crossing the river that 
flows through the estate, have thick bars fiUing 
up the arches. 

On entering the park the cocked turbans of the 
bodyguard again reminded us of the hats of the 
French Guards. 

Heavy coaches with solid wheels, hermetically 
covered with red stuff patterned with white, were 
bringing home the invisible but noisy ladies of the 
zenana. 

The garden, which is very extensive and laid out 

in beds carefully crammed with common flowers, 

has Jablochkoff lamps at every turning. It is 

traversed by a little narrow-gauge railway, and 

202 



GWALIOR 

the toy train is kept under a vault of the brand- 
new, spotless white palace. 

The Maharajah was out, at his devotions ; I could 
see everything. Up a staircase with a gilt paper 
and gilt banisters, leading to rooms where crystal 
lustres hang like tears above Oxford Street furni- 
ture, and lovely chromo-lithographs in massive and 
glittering frames. 

In the forecourt a cast-metal nymph presides 
over a sham-bronze fountain. 

The south-western side of the great rock of Gwalior 
is hewn into temples sheltering gigantic statues 
of Tirthankar; there are the usual bas-reliefs all 
over the walls, idols squatting under canopies and 
pagodas, slender columns supporting arches, stand- 
ing out in contrast with the ochre-coloured stone. 
Other temples, vast halls as at Ellora — a vale of 
pagodas, " the happy valley " — have all disappeared 
under the picks of engineers, to make a dusty 
road to the new town of bungalows all adobe and 
straw thatch. 

As the sun sank the citadel absorbed the gold 

and purple glory, and looked as though it were 

of some translucent half -fused metal; the towers 

and temples with their decoration of tiles blazed 

203 



against the pure sky. High over Mandir a little 
balcony with spindle columns, overhanging the 
precipice at a giddy height, caught the last rays 
of Surya, and flashed with a gem-like gleam above 
Gwalior, which was already shrouded in the blue 
haze of night. 

AGRA 

In a suburb of little houses beyond a great open 
square stands a gateway — a monumental portico of 
pink sandstone inlaid with white marble, on which 
the texts from the Koran, in black marble, look 
green in the intense light. 

On entering this portal, lo, a miraculous vision ! 
At the end of an avenue of dark cypress trees 
stands the tomb of Mumtaj- Mahal, a dream in 
marble, its whiteness, crowned by five cupolas that 
might be pearls, mirrored in a pool edged with pink 
stone and borders of flowers. 

The whole mausoleum, the terrace on which it 

stands, the four minarets as tall as light-towers, 

are all in dead white marble, the whiteness of 

milk and opal, glistening with nacreous tints in 

the brilliant sunshine under a sky pale with heat 

and dust. 

204 



AGRA 

Inside, the walls are panelled with mosaic of 
carnelian and chalcedony, representing poppies and 
funkias, so fragile-looking, so delicate, that they 
seem real flowers blooming in front of the marble. 
And marble screens, carved into lace-work, filling 
the high doorways and the windows, admit a tender 
amber-toned light. 

. Under the central dome sleeps Mumtaj -Mahal, 
the well-beloved sultana, for whom Shah Jehan 
erected the most beautiful mausoleum in the world. 

A marble balustrade, of flowing design and 
astounding delicacy, exquisitely harmonious and 
artistic, encloses the white sarcophagus, which is 
inlaid with mindi and basilic flowers in costly agate, 
linked by inscriptions looking like lacings of narrow 
black braid. This balustrade alone, in the Taj, 
under the marble pile which forms the tomb of 
the empress, and on which 20,000 craftsmen la- 
boured for twenty years, would, in its indescribable 
beauty of workmanship, have amply fulfilled Shah 
Jehan's vow. 

On the outside, all round the lower part of the 

monument, carved borders frame flow^ers of pale 

mosaic in the walls ; the ornament is in such faint 

relief that at a short distance it is invisible, and 

the Taj is seen only in the perfect elegance of its 

205 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

proportions. The mausoleum is built on a broad 
terrace of white marble at a height of 270 feet, 
overhanging the Jumna ; and the impressive, har- 
monious outline commands the plain from afar. 

Legends have gathered round the Taj Mahal 
as about every old building in India, and this one 
seems to me not impossible in its barbarity. 

When the last stone was placed, Shah Jehan sent 
for the architect and went with him to the top of 
the mausoleum. 

" Could you design another tomb as beautiful as 
this ? " asked the emperor. 

And on the man's replying that he would try, 
the sultan, who chose that the monument should 
have no rival, caused the architect to be thrown 
into the Jumna on the spot, where he was dashed 
to pieces at the foot of his masterpiece, which 
remains unique. 

The fort, rising from a rock wall of rose-red 
sandstone, is reached by a series of drawbridges 
and bastions, now no longer needed and open to all 
comers. 

The central square, formerly the Sultan Akbar's 
garden, is now a parade-ground for soldiers, and 

barracks occupy the site of ruined palaces. Still 

206 



AGEA 

some remains of ancient splendour are to be seen 
that have escaped the vandals. 

Here, a white marble mosque v^ith three flights 
of open arcades, with white domes to roof it, is 
paved with rectangular flags, each bordered with 
a fillet of black marble ending in an arch-like point, 
immovable prayer-carpets turned towards Mecca. 
Behind the marble lattices that form one wall of 
this mosque, the women of the zenana come to hear 
the mooUah recite prayer. 

Under a loggia, flowery with mosaics of jasper 
and carnelian, the emperor, seated on a white 
marble throne embroidered with carving, adminis- 
tered justice. At his feet, on a raised stone flag, 
the divan, his prime minister took down the 
despot's words, to transmit them to the people who 
were kept at a respectful distance under a colonnade, 
forming a verandah round the imperial palace. 

And this morning I had seen in the place of 
Akbar or Jehangir, a sturdy, blowsy soldier, in his 
red coatee, his feet raised higher than his head, 
spread out in his wicker deck-chair, and reading 
the latest news just brought by the mail from 
Europe. 

The sultana's mosque is quite small, of trans- 
lucent milky-white marble, and close by it is a 

207 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

red wall, hardly pierced by a narrow window with 
a stone screen, behind which Shah Jehangir was 
kept a prisoner for seven years. 

Dewani Khas, the great hall of audience, on 
columns open on all sides to the sky and landscape, 
overlooks a pit about thirty paces away where tigers 
and elephants fought to divert the sultan and his 
court. At the threshold is a large block of black 
marble — the throne of Akbar the Great. At the 
time of the incursion of the Jats, who drove the 
emperor from his palace, as soon as the usurper took 
his seat, the stone, the legend tells, split and shed 
blood ; the iridescent stain remains to this day. 

Above the throne, in the white marble wall, is a 
round hole, the mark of a cannon-ball at the time 
of the Mutiny. Out of this came a parrot, gravely 
perching to scratch its poll ; then, alarmed at seeing 
us so close, it retired into its hole again. 

Further on we came to a courtyard surrounded by 

a cloister, where the market for precious stones was 

held. The empress, invisible under her wrappers of 

gauze as thin as air, and surrounded by her women 

fanning her, would come out on her high balcony to 

choose the gems that pleased her for a moment by 

their sparkle, and then disappear into the gardens 

behind insurmountable walls. In another court, a 

208 



AGRA 

pool kept stocked with fish gave Shah Jehangir the 
pleasure of fancying he was fishing. 

At one corner of a bastion of the rampart rises 
the Jasmine tower, the empress's pavilion, built of 
amber-toned marble inlaid with gold and mother- 
of-pearl. A double wall of pierced lattice, as fine 
as a hand-screen, enclosed the octagon chamber; 
the doors, which were of massive silver jewelled 
with rubies, have been removed. The golden lilies 
inlaid in the panels have also disappeared, roughly 
torn out and leaving the glint of their presence in 
a warmer hue, still faintly metallic. Eecesses in 
the wall, like porticoes, served for hanging dresses 
in, and low down, holes large enough to admit the 
hand, were hiding-places for jewels, between two 
slabs of marble. In front of the sultana's kiosk, 
basins in the form of shells, from which rose- 
water poured forth, go down like steps to a tank 
below. 

The subterranean passage leading from the 
empress's rooms to the mosque, has in the roof 
a thick flagstone that admits a subdued glimmer 
as through amber or honey, lighting up all one 
end of the dark corridor. 

The sultan's bath is lined with panels of lapis 
lazuli framed in gold, and inlaid with mother-of- 
p 209 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

pearl, or looking-glass, and the walls have little 
hollow niches for lamps, over which the water fell 
in a shower into a bath with a decoration of scroll- 
work. And in front of Jehangir's room, again a 
series of basins hollowed in the steps of a broad 
marble stair, where a stream of water fell from 
one to another. 

We saw the Jasmine tower from a corner of the 
garden in the glow of sunset. With its gilt cupola 
blazing in the low beams, its amber-hued walls as 
transparent as melting wax, and its pierced screen- 
work, it looked so diaphanous, so fragile, that it might 
be carried away by the evening breeze. And beyond 
the pavilion, above the ramparts carved with huge 
elephants, lies the old Hindoo palace, deserted by 
Jehangir for his house of pale marbles — an endless 
palace, a labyrinth of red buildings loaded to the 
top with an agglomeration of ornament supporting 
flat roofs. And pagodas that have lost their doors, 
a work of destruction begun by Aurungzeeb. One 
court is still intact, overhung by seventy -two 
balconies, where the zenana could look on at the 
dancing of bayaderes. Perfect, too, is the queen's 
private apartment, with two walls between which 
an army kept guard by day and by night. 



210 



AGKA 

A road between ancient trees and green fields 
which are perpetually irrigated leads to Sicandra- 
Bagh. Here, at the end of a wretched village 
of huts and hovels, is the magnificence of a stately 
portal of red stone broadly decorated with white; and 
then, through a garden where trees and shrubs make 
one huge bouquet, behold the imposing mass of the 
tomb of Akbar the Great. The mausoleum is on 
the scale of a cathedral. There are two stories 
of galleries in pink sandstone crowned by a 
marble pavilion with lace-like walls; and there, 
high up, is the sarcophagus of white stone, covered 
with inscriptions setting forth the nineteen names of 
Allah. 

Near this tomb is a stele with the dish on 
the top of it in which the Koh-i-noor was found. 
In the crypt of the mosque, at the end of a passage, 
is a vaulted room lined with stucco and devoid of 
ornament, and here is the burial place of Akbar, a 
mound covered with lime. The sarcophagus above, 
at the foot of which the Koh-i-noor once blazed, is 
but the replica of this. 

This cell is as dark as a cellar, barbarously squalid. 
But to all our questions the moollah who was our 
guide only replied : 

"Nothing could be fine enough to be worthy of 

211 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Akbar, so this was made in a hurry that he might 
at least rest in peace without delay." 

In the heart of Agra towards evening people were 
busy in the square of the Jumna Musjid stretching 
pieces of stuff over rather low poles to form a tent. 
Then in long file came the labourers from a famine- 
camp, with their sleep-walking gait, their glassy 
eyes, their teeth showing like those of a grinning 
skull. Eags in a thousand holes scarcely covered 
the horrors of their fleshless bodies. 

The children of the bazaar watched them pass, 
holding out in their fingers scraps of food — the 
remains of cakes, green fruit, or handfuls of rice, 
and the famishing creatures quarrelled for the 
morsels, frightening the little ones, who fled. Then 
they disappeared silently under the awnings, filling 
the air with a smell of dust and pepper, scaring the 
pigeons away from the pool for ablutions, and the 
birds fluttered up in dismay in the rosy sunset glow, 
seeking some other refuge for the night. 



212 



JEYPOOR 



JEYPOOR 

Broad streets crossing each other at right angles ; 
houses, palaces, archways flanked by towers, and 
colonnades, all alike covered with pink-washed 
plaster decorated with white. And all the buildings 
have the hasty, temporary appearance of a town 
run up for an exhibition to last only a few months. 

There is a never-ending traffic of elephants, 
baggage-camels, and vehicles with shouting drivers ; 
and on the ground are spread heaps of fruit, baskets 
for sale, glass baubles and weapons. In all the 
pink and white throng not an European dress is 
to be seen, not even one of the vile compounds 
adopted by the baboo, a striped flannel jacket over 
the dhoti. Men and women alike wear necklaces 
of flowers, or flowers in their hair ; the children are 
gaudy with trinkets and glass beads. 

The Eajah's residence, of plaster like the rest 
of the town, is pink too outside, but the interior is 
aggressive with paint of harsh colours. In the 
living rooms is shabby furniture, gilt chairs turned 
one over the other, as on the day after a ball. The 
curtains over the doors and windows are of silk, 

213 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

but frayed and threadbare. In the shade of a 
marble court with carved columns, clerks are 
employed in counting money — handsome coins 
stamped with flowers and Indian characters, laid out 
in rows. They count them into bags round which 
soldiers mount guard. 

Outside the palace is a large garden, devoid of 
shade, with pools of water bowered in flowers and 
shrubs that shelter myriads of singing birds. At 
the end of the park is a tank full of crocodiles. A 
keeper called the brutes, and they came up facing 
us in a row, their jaws open to catch the food 
which the Eajah amuses himself by throwing to 
them. 

In the bazaar a light, glossy cheetah was being 
led round for an airing. The beast had on a sort of 
hood of silk stuck with peacock's feathers, which its 
keeper pulled down over its eyes when it saw a 
prey on which it was eager to spring; and with 
its eyes thus blinded, it would lick the hand that 
gave it an anna with. a hot tongue as rough as a 
rasp. 

A salesman of whom I had bought several things, 

wishing to do me a civility, called a tom-tom player, 

who was to escort me home rapping on his ass's 

214 



JEYPOOR 

skin ; and when I declined very positively, the poor 
man murmured with a piteous, crushed look : 

"What a pity that the sahib does not like 
music ! " 

All about the town of pink plaster, in the dust of 
the roads and fields, are an endless number of dead 
temples — temples of every size and of every period ; 
and all deserted, all empty; even those that are 
uninjured look like ruins. 

And for an hour as we drove along towards 
Amber, the old town deserted in favour of modern 
Jeypoor, the same succession of temples wheeled 
past. The crenated walls enclose three hills, one 
of them crowned by a fortress, to defend erewhile 
the white palace mirrored in the waters of an 
artificial lake. 

All round the Eajah's palace crowds a town of 

palaces, mosques, and temples dedicated to Vishnu ; 

and outside the walls, on a plain lying between the 

hills of Amber, is another town, still thick with 

ruins amid the forest of encroaching trees. And 

it is all dead, deserted, dust-coloured, unspeakably 

sad, with the sadness of destruction and desertion in 

the midst of a landscape gorgeous with flowers and 

groves. In the palace of Amber, guides make a good 

215 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

business of showing us the public rooms, baths, and 
bedrooms, all restored with an eye to the tourist. 
In the gardens, heavy with perfume, the trees 
display swinging balls of baked earth full of holes, 
which protect the ripening fruit from the monkeys ; 
a whole tribe of them scampered off at our approach, 
and went to torment the peacocks that were 
solemnly promenading a path, and that presently 
flew away. 

DELHI. 

In the centre of the modern fort, a belt of walls 
with gates that form palaces under the arches, is 
the ancient residence of the Moguls. Beyond 
the barracks full of native and English soldiers, 
we reached the cool silence of the throne -room. 
Colonnades of red stone surround a throne of white 
marble inlaid with lilies in carnelian on tall stems 
of jasper. All round this throne, to protect it from 
the tourists, but also as if to emphasize its vanity, 
is a railing. 

On the very edge of the Jumna, where russet 
fields break the monotony of its white sandy banks, 
is the private state-room, the residence of the 
sovereigns of Delhi, built of translucent milky 

216 



DELHI 

marble, warmed by the reflection of gold inlaid 
on the columns and merged with the stone that is 
turned to amber. 

Under the white dome a wooden ceiling, gilt in 
the hollows of the carving, has taken the place of 
an earlier ceiling of massive silver, worth seventy 
lacs of rupees, which was carried off by the con- 
querors after some long-ago seizure of the city. 
Inside, by way of walls, are carvings in marble of 
twisted lilies, inconceivably graceful and light. 
And then, at one of the entrances, those marble 
lattices, once gilt and now bereft of their gold, look 
just like topaz in the midday sun. After that magic 
splendour of gold and marbles fused to topaz and 
amber, the rest of the palace — the sleeping-rooms, 
the couches inlaid with mosaic flowers, the pierced 
stone balconies overlooking the Jumna — all seemed 
commonplace and familiar. 

From a quite small garden close to the palace a 

bronze gate with three medallions of lilies in high 

relief, of marvellous workmanship, opens on the 

Pearl Mosque, exquisitely white, at the end of its 

forecourt of immaculate pavement enclosed by a 

marble balustrade. Three polished and shining 

domes are supported by columns of snow made 

of a hard white marble, scarcely broken by orna- 

217 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

ment, and carrying a roof hollowed into three 
vaults. The rings are still to be seen on the 
marble walls outside, to which, when the great 
Mogul came to prayer, curtains were attached made 
of gold net and spangled with diamonds and pearls. 
In the evening I was to dine with the officers of 
the Artillery mess, and in going I lost my way. 
Suddenly before me stood the amber palace, with 
blue shadows, moon-coloured, the carvings like opal 
in changing hues of precious gems. Half hidden 
by a growth of jasmine that loaded the air with 
fragrance, up rose the cupolas of the little mosque, 
like pearls reflecting the sparkle of the stars. 

Outside the town of Delhi a road bordered by 
great trees leads across the white plain, all strewn 
with temples and tombs, to Khoutab, the ancient 
capital of the Moguls — a dead city, where the ruins 
still standing in many places speak of a past of 
unimaginable splendour. There is a colossal tower 
of red masonry that springs from the soil with no 
basement ; it is reeded from top to bottom, gradually 
growing thinner as it rises, with fillets of letters in 
relief, and balconies on brackets as light as ribbands 
alternating to the top. It is an enormous mass of 
red stone, which the ages have scarcely discoloured, 

218 



DELHI 

and was built by Khoiitab-Oudeen Eibek to com- 
memorate his victory over the Sultan Pithri-Eaj, 
the triumph of Islam over Brahminism. 

To reach this tower in its garden of flowering 
shrubs the way is under the Alandin gate of pink 
sandstone ; the name evokes a tale of wonder, and 
the pointed arch, exquisitely noble in its curve, looks 
like pale vellum, graven all over with ornaments, 
and inscriptions to the glory of Allah. 

Close to the monumental trophy of Khoutab is a 
temple with columns innumerable, and all different, 
overloaded with carvings incised and in relief, with 
large capitals; beams meet and cross under the roof, 
also carved in the ponderous stone, and the whole 
forms a cloister round a court ; while in the centre, 
amid Moslem tombs, an iron pillar stands, eight 
metres high, a pillar of which there are seven 
metres sunk in the ground — a colossal casting 
placed here in 317, when half the civilized world 
was as yet ignorant of the art of working in metal. 
An inscription records that "King Dhava, a wor- 
shipper of Vishnu, set up this pillar to commemorate 
his victory over the Belikas of Sindhu." 

And side by side with history a pleasing legend 
tells that King Anang-Pal yearned to atone for his 
faults and redeem the earth from sin. So by the 

219 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

counsels of a wise Brahmin he caused this vast iron 
spike to be forged by giants, to be driven into the 
earth and pierce the serpent Sechnaga, who upholds 
the world. The deed was done, but because certain 
disbelieving men denied that the monster was dead, 
the king caused the weapon to be pulled up, and at 
the end of it behold the stain of blood ; so the iron 
beam was driven in again. But the spell was 
broken — the creature had escaped. The column 
remained unstable, prefiguring the end of the 
dynasty of Anang, and the serpent still works his 
wicked will. 

Only one entrance to the temple remains, built 
of polished red stone mingled harmoniously with 
marble, toned by time to a warm golden hue almost 
rose-colour. All the profusion of Indian design is 
lavished on this gateway framing the marvel 
erected by Pal. Tangles of interlacing letters in- 
cised and in relief, mingling with trails of flowers 
as lissom as climbing plants, and supporting figures 
of gods ; while a fine powdering of white dust over 
the dimmed warm yellow of marble and sandstone 
softens yet more the carved flowers and sinuous 
patterns, amid which the images sit in tranquil 
attitudes. 

A roofless mausoleum is that of the Sultan 

220 



DELHI 

Altamsh, who desired to sleep for ever with no 
vault over his tomb but that of the heavens; a 
vast hall, its walls wrought with inscriptions in 
Persian, Hindostanee, and Arabic, built of brick- 
red granite and yellow marble softened to pale 
orange in the golden sunshine. Here and there 
traces may be seen of wall-paintings, green and 
blue, but quite faded, and now merely a darker 
shadow round the incised ornament. Hibiscus 
shrubs mingle their branches over the tomb and 
drop large blood-red blossoms on the stone sarco- 
phagus. Further on is another mausoleum, in such 
good preservation that it has been utilized as a 
bungalow for some official. 

After passing the temples and tombs that sur- 
round the Khoutab, the town of ruins lies scattered 
over the plain of pale sand and withered herbage. 

A prodigious palace has left the skeleton of its 

walls pierced with large windows, and in the 

blackened stone, almost at the top of the building, a 

balcony with a canopy over it, resting on fragile 

columns, is still uninjured; of a pale yellow, like 

lemon -tree wood, it looks as if it had come into 

existence only yesterday, a flower risen from the 

death of the ruins. 

Huge vultures were prowling about the place. 

221 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At our approach they flapped a little away, and 
then perching on a heap of stones preened their 
feathers with clumsy, ungraceful movements. 

A tank here is deep below ground, down three 
flights of galleries. Quite at the bottom is a little 
stagnant water, into which children leap from the 
top of the structure, a plunge of twenty metres, 
ending in a great splash of green mud that smells 
of water-lilies and grease. 

More and yet more palaces ; remains of marble 
porticoes and columns, walls covered with tiles 
glittering in the blazing sunshine like topaz and 
emerald ; and over all the peace of dust and death, 
the only moving thing those vultures, in shades of 
dull grey almost indistinguishable from the colour 
of the stones. 

And suddenly, emerging from the ruins, we came 
on a Moslem street with high walls, windowless, 
and waving plumes of banyan and palm trees rising 
above the houses. 

At the top of the street a caravan of moollahs 
were performing their devotions at the tomb of a 
Mohammedan saint, whose sarcophagus was en- 
closed within a balustrade of marble and a border 
of lilies, alternately yellow and green, with large 

fuU-blown flowers in blue, fragile relics that have 

222 



DELHI 

survived for centuries amid ruins that are com- 
paratively recent. 

The road goes on. Trees cast their shade on 
the flagstone pavement, but between the houses 
and through open windows the sandy plain may 
be seen, the endless whiteness lost in a horizon of 
dust. 

And again ruins. Under an archway still left 
standing on piers carved with lilies and foliage, lay 
a whole family of pariahs covered with leprosy and 
sores. 

Close to a village that has sprouted under the 
baobab-trees, in the midst of the plain that once 
was Khoutab, in the court of a mosque, is the 
marble sarcophagus of a princess. Grass is growing 
in the hollow of the stone that covers her, in fulfil- 
ment of the wishes of the maiden, who in her 
humility desired that when she was dead she should 
be laid to rest under the common earth whence the 
grass grows in the spring. And not far from the 
rajah's daughter, under a broad tamarind tree, in 
the blue shade, is the tomb of Kushru, the poet 
who immortalized Bagh-o-Bahar. On the sarco- 
phagus, in the little kiosk, was a kerchief of silk 
and gold, with a wreath of fresh flowers renewed 

every day by the faithful. 

223 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

A humble poet, more venerated than the kings 
whose superb mausoleums are crumbling to dust in 
subjugated India, who, though she forgets her past, 
is still true to her dreams. 

Another magnificent temple, with marble arcades 
wrought to filigree, curved in frilled arches, on 
spindle -like columns that soar to support the 
cupolas, as light as flower - stems. A gem of 
whiteness and sheen in the desert of ruins where 
yet stand three matchless marvels : the tower of 
Khoutab, the gate of Alandin, and the column of 
Dhava. 

Toglackabad, again an ancient Delhi, a rock on 
the bank of the Jumna after crossing a white 
desert; walls of granite, massive bastions, battle- 
mented towers of a Saracen stamp, rough-hewn, 
devoid of ornament, and uniform in colour — 
bluish with light patches of lichen. The enclosure 
has crumbled into ruin, in places making breaches 
in the walls, which nevertheless preserve the for- 
bidding aspect of an impregnable citadel. 

Entering by one of the fourteen gates in the 
ramparts of stone blocks scarcely hewn into shape, 
the city of palaces and mosques is found in ruins, 

matching the fortifications, without any decoration, 

224 



DELHI 

and all of the same cold grey hue, like a city of 
prisons. 

At a short distance from Toglackabad, on a solitary 
rock, stands a square building of massive archi- 
tecture, sober in outline, and crowned by a stone 
dome. It dwells alone, surrounded by walls ; the 
mausoleum of Toglack, containing his tomb with 
that of his wife and his son, Mohammed the Cruel. 

And there are ruins all the way to Delhi, whither 
we returned by the old fortress of Purana Kila, with 
its pink walls overlooked by a few aerial minarets 
and more traces of graceful carving, the precursors 
of the Divan i Khas and Moti Musjid the Pearl 
Mosque. 

In the town camels were harnessed to a sort of 
carriage like a hut perched on misshapen wheels, 
and rumbling slowly through the streets, seeming 
very heavy at the heels of the big beast with its 
shambling gait. 

To the Chandni Chowk — the bazaar. In a minia- 
ture-painter's shop was a medley of ivories, of boxes 
inlaid with silver and ebony, and toys carved in 
sandal-wood. 

The artist sat at work in a corner of the window, 

copying minutely, for the thousandth time perhaps, 

a Taj or a Moti Musjid. Quite unmoved while his 
Q 225 



/■ 
/ 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

shopman displayed his wares, he worked on with 
brushes as fine as needles; but when, on leaving, 
I asked him where I could procure some colours 
I needed, " Then the sahib paints ? " said he ; and 
he rose at once, insisted on my taking a seat, pressed 
me to accept a little sandal-wood frame, as a fellow- 
artist, and then would positively paint my portrait. 

In a little alley of booths was a shop with no 
front show, and behind it a sort of studio full of 
carvers and artists working on sandal-wood boxes, 
ivory fans as fine as gauze, and wooden lattices 
with elaborate flower patterns, used to screen the 
zenana windows. And in little recesses workmen 
dressed in white, with small copper pots about them 
in which they had brought rice for their meals, were 
chasing and embossing metal with little taps of their 
primitive tools, never making a mistake, working 
as their fancy might suggest, without any pattern, 
and quite at home in the maze of interlacing orna- 
ment. 

In order that I might be far from the noise of 

the street the merchant had the objects I wished to 

see brought to me in a little room over the shop. 

Everything was spread before me on a white sheet, 

in the middle of which I sat. Eefreshments were 

226 



DELHI 

brought, fruits and sweetmeats, while a coolie waved 
a large fan over my head — a huge palm-leaf stitched 
with bright-hued silks. 

In the distance we heard a sound of pipes, and 
the merchant hastened out to call the nautch-girls, 
who began to dance in the street just below us, 
among the vehicles and foot-passengers. There 
were two of them; one in a black skirt spangled 
with silver trinkets, the other in orange and red 
with a head-dress and necklace of jasmine. They 
danced with a gliding step, and then drew them- 
selves up with a sudden jerk that made all their 
frippery tinkle. Then the girl in black, laying her 
right hand on her breast, stood still, with only a 
measured swaying movement of her whole body, 
while the dancer in yellow circled round, spinning 
as she went. ISText the black one performed a sort 
of goose-step with her feet on one spot, yelling a 
so-called tune, and clacking her anklets one against 
the other. Then, after a few high leaps that set her 
saree flying, the dance was ended ; she drew a black 
veil over her head, and turned with her face to the 
wall. The other boldly asked for backsheesh, held 
up her hands, and after getting her money, begged 
for cakes and sugar. 



227 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

In the evening to the theatre — a Parsee theatre ; 
a large tent, reserved for women on one side by a 
hanging of mats. The public were English soldiers 
and baboos with their children, and in the cheapest 
places a packed crowd of coolies. 

The manager also traded in clocks, and a selection 
was displayed for sale at one end of the stalls. 

The orchestra, consisting of a harmonium, a violin, 
and a darboukha, played a languishing, drawling air 
to a halting rhythm, while the chorus, standing in 
a line on the stage, sang the introductory verses. 

The actors were exclusively men and boys, those 
who took female parts wore rusty wigs over their 
own long, black hair ; these were plaited on each 
side of the face, and waxed behind to fall over 
the shoulders. The costumes of velvet and satin, 
heavily embroidered with gold and silver, were 
hideous. 

The scenery was preposterous: red and green 
flowers growing on violet boughs, with forests in 
the background of pink and yellow trees; per- 
spective views of streets, in which the houses were 
climbing over each other, and finally a purple 
cavern under a brilliant yellow sky. 

The actors spoke their parts like lessons, with 

a gesture only now and then, and invariably wrong ; 

228 



DELHI 

and they all spoke and sang through the nose in 
an irritating voice pitched too high. 

The play was Gul-E-Bahaoli. 

King Zainulmulook has lost his sight, and can 
recover it only if someone will bring to him a 
miraculous flower from the garden of Bakaoli. His 
four sons set out in search of it. Zainulmulook 
has a fifth son, named Tazulmulook. At the birth 
of this child the king has had his horoscope cast 
by the astrologers of the palace, who declared that 
the king would become blind if he should see his son 
before his twelfth year; but hunting one day the 
king has met Tazulmulook, who was walking in 
the forest, and has lost his sight. 

In a jungle we now see Tazulmulook banished 
and solitary, and he relates his woes. 

The four sons of the king presently come to 
a town. They ring at the door of a house in- 
habited by a woman who, as the little English 
translation tells us, carries on a foul trade, and 
Dilbar the dancing-girl appears. 

This Dilbar was a boy with a more woolly wig 
than the others, and to emphasize her sex wore 
a monstrous display of trinkets round her neck 
and arms, in her ears and nose. 

Dilbar dances and sings before the brothers, and 

229 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

then proposes to play cards. The stake is the 
liberty of the loser. The four princes play against 
the dancing-girl, who wins and has them imprisoned 
on the spot. 

Tazulmulook arrives in the same town, and is 
on the point of ringing at Dilbar's door when he 
is hindered by his father's vizier, who tells him 
how many times this dangerous woman has been 
the ruin of kings' sons. But Tazulmulook, in a 
discourse on valour addressed to the audience, who 
stamped applause, rejects the counsels of prudence 
and rings at the dancer's door. Tazulmulook wins 
the game with Dilbar, and compels her to release 
his brothers, but only after branding each on the 
back of his neck. 

The young prince then goes on his way in search 
of the magical flower. He is about to rest awhile 
in a cavern, but at the moment when he lies down 
on a stone it is transformed into a monster made of 
bladder, which rears itself enraged in the air with 
a trumpet-cry. By good luck the king's son calls 
upon the aid of the prophet Suleiman, whom the 
dragon also reveres, and the pacified monster con- 
veys Tazulmulook to the garden of Bakaoli, and, 
moreover, gives him a ring which will be a talisman 
in danger. 

230 



DELHI 

Tazulmulook finds Bakaoli asleep in her garden, 
and after plucking the miraculous flower he ex- 
changes the ring for that of the princess and 
departs. Bakaoli awakes, and discovering the theft 
of the flower and of her ring is much disturbed, 
and gives orders that the thief is to be caught. 

Tazulmulook on his way meets a blind man, 
whom he restores to sight by the help of the 
magical flower ; the man relates the story of the 
cure to the four brothers, who quickly follow up 
Tazulmulook and presently overtake him. After 
a short conflict they rob him of the talisman and 
fly. The young prince is in despair, but as he 
wrings his hands he rubs Bakaoli's ring and the 
dragon instantly appears. Tazulmulook commands 
him forthwith to build a palace in front of that of 
King Zainulmulook. 

While all this is going forward in the jungle, 
Bakaoli, disguised as an astrologer, comes to the 
king, to whom she promises the coming of the 
miraculous flower, and even while she is speaking 
the return of the four princes is announced. 

The old king is at once cured ; he embraces his 

sons again and again. After this emotion the 

first thing he remarks is the new palace that has 

sprung from the ground exactly opposite his own. 

231 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

He, with his four sons, goes to pay a call on 
Tazulmulook, whom he does not recognize in his 
palace, when suddenly Dilbar arrives to claim her 
prisoners. The fifth son then relates to the king 
the deeds of his elder brothers, and in proof of 
his words points to the mark each of them bears 
on his neck. The king anathematizes the princes, 
and sends them to prison, but loads Tazulmulook 
with honours and affection. 

Bakaoli, having returned to her own country, 
sends her confidante, named Hammala, with a 
letter to Tazulmulook, who at once follows the 
messenger. The prince and the queen fall in love 
with each other. Bakaoli's mother finds them 
together, and furious at the disobedience of her 
daughter, who is affianced to another rajah, she 
calls up a djinn to plunge Tazulmulook in a magic 
fount. The prince finds himself transformed into 
a devil with horns, and wanders about the jungle 
once more. There he meets a pariah woman with 
three children, who begs him to marry her. Tazul- 
mulook in despair leaps back into the spring to 
die there, and to his great surprise recovers his 
original shape. 

Bakaoli bewails her lover's departure, for which 

no one, not even her mother, can comfort her. 

232 



AMRITSUR 

Tazulmulook, again an outcast in the jungle, 
rescues a lady related to Bakaoli from the embrace 
of a demon, and she in gratitude takes the prince 
to Bakaoli's court. So at last the lovers are united 
and married. 

This interminable piece, with twenty changes of 
scene, dragged its weary length till two in the 
morning. One by one the soldiers went away ; 
even the baboos soon followed them, and only the 
coolies remained, enthusiastically applauding every 
scene, every harangue, in a frenzy of delight, before 
the final apotheosis of Tazulmulook and Bakaoli, 
as man and wife, lovingly united against a back- 
ground of trees with golden boughs. 



AMRITSUR 

In the midst of the Lake of Immortality stands 
a marble temple with a roof and decorations of 
gold. All round the sacred lake palaces of delicate 
hue form a circle about the sanctuary, which glistens 
in the sun, its gilding and pale-tinted marbles re- 
flected like the gleam of precious stones in the 
calm, sheeny, deeply transparent water. 

A causeway of white stone, with a fragile balus- 

233 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

trade and columns bearing lanterns of gold, leads 
from the shore to the temple. 

Inside the building, under a silken Persian rug, 
stretched like an awning, there were piles of coin 
on a cloth spread on the ground, with flowers, rice, 
and sweetmeats offered there. In a recess was a 
band of musicians — tom-toms and fiddles — scarcely 
audible in the turmoil of shouted prayers and the 
chatter of the faithful. 

At the end of a passage that runs round the 
temple an old woman who had just been bathing 
was changing her wet saree for a dry one, and 
appeared quite stripped, dropping her garments, 
and careful only not to let her face be seen. 

There was at the top of the temple a sarcophagus 
in a shrine, on which were masses of impalpable 
silk gauze embroidered with gold, which looked like 
a peacock's breast, so subtle were the transparent 
colours lying one above another — green, blue, and 
yellow predominating, gauze so light that the 
slightest breath set it floating in glistening and 
changing hues ; and on the snowy white pavement 
of the floor was strewn a carpet of very pale lilac 
lilies and mindi flowers. 



234 



LAHORE 



LAHORE 

The same ubiquitous terminus on a sandy plain, 
remote from everything ; then a drive jolting through 
bogs, and we reached the dirty, scattered town 
crowded with people who had collected round a 
sort of fair with booths for mountebanks, and 
roundabouts of wooden horses. 

In an alley of the bazaar girls were lounging 
in hammocks hung to nails outside the windows, 
smoking and spitting down on the world below. 

A delightful surprise was a museum of Indian 
art, the first I had seen, a fine collection and 
admirably arranged;* but the natives who re- 
sorted hither to enjoy the cool shelter of the 
galleries talked to each other from a distance, as 
is their universal custom, at the top of their 
voices, which rang doubly loud under the echoing 
vaults. 

The ancient palace of the kings of Lahore. Amid 
the ruins there is a mosque of red stone flowered 

* By Mr. John Lockwood Kipling, for many years the curator 
and head of the art schools at Lahore. — Translator. 

235 



EISrCHANTED INDIA 

with white marble, the cupola of a material so milky 
that it might be jade ; and the structure is mirrored 
in a pool of clear water, dappled with sun-sparks 
over the rose-coloured stones at the bottom. 

Another mausoleum is of lace -like carving in 
marble, the roof painted with Persian ornament; and 
the whole thing is uninjured, as fresh as if it had 
been wrought yesterday, under the broad shade of 
theobromas and cedars that have grown up among 
the ruins. 

Behind a ponderous wall, dinted all over by shot, 
and showing broad, light patches once covered by 
earthenware tiles, is the palace of Eunjeet Singh, 
inlaid with enamelled pictures in green, blue, and 
yellow of tiger-fights and horse-races, mingling with 
flowers and garlands of boughs. The durbar, the 
hall or presence chamber, opens by a verandah on a 
forecourt paved with marble ; in its walls are 
mirrors and panels of coloured glass over a ground 
of dull gold, agate -like tints iridescent with a 
nacreous, silvery, luminous lustre. 

In one vast hall were ancient weapons, swords 
and pistols, enriched with precious stones; suits 
of armour damascened with gold, guns with silver 
stocks set with pearls, and a whole battery of field- 
pieces to be carried on camels' backs and spit out 

236 



LAHORE 

tiny balls — enormously, absurdly long, still perched 
on their saddle-shaped carriages. And in a window 
bay two toy cannon made of gold and silver, with 
which Dhuleep Singh used to play as a child before 
he lost his realm. 

At two or three leagues from Lahore, in a city 
of ruins, opposite a tumble -down mosque which 
is strewing a powdering of rose-coloured stones 
on its white marble court, stands the tomb of 
Jehangir, splendid, and more splendid amid the 
squalor that surrounds it. 

The sarcophagus rests in the depths of a vaulted 
crypt lighted only by narrow latticed loopholes, and 
it is shrouded in a mysterious glimmer, a mingling 
of golden sunbeams and the reflections from the 
marble walls inlaid with precious stones. 

On the tomb, in elegant black letters, is this 
inscription : 

" Here lies Jehangir^ Conqueror of the WorldJ^ 

As we returned to Lahore the palace rose before 
us among trees, a strip of wall, uninjured, covered 
with sapphire and emerald tiles ; a fragile minaret 
crowning a tower bowered in flowering shrubs — and 
then the vision was past. The carriage drove on for 

237 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

a long way by ruins and vestiges of beauty, and 
re-entered the town, where lanterns were being 
lighted over the throng that pushed and hustled 
about the fair. 



RAWAL PINDI 

From Lahore hither is an almost uninterrupted 
series of encampments — English and native regi- 
ments established in huts in the open fields far from 
every town, close only to the railway line. At one 
station a detachment of Indian guards were drawn 
up, and Abibulla declared from the number of men 
that they must be expecting a general at least ; but 
nothing was discharged from the train but some 
cases of rupees, checked off by two English officers, 
and then carried to the barracks under the escort of 
sepoys. 

This Eawal Pindi is an English town of cottages 
surrounded by lawns and shrubberies; about two 
streets of bazaar, and red uniforms everywhere, 
Highland soldiers in kilts, white helmets, and the 
officers' and sergeants' wives airing their Sunday 
finery in their buggies. The ladies drive them- 
selves, under the shelter of a sunshade on an all 

238 



EAWAL PINDI 

too short stick, painfully held by a hapless native 
servant clinging to the back of the carriage in a 
dislocating monkey-like attitude. 

A regiment of artillery was marching into 
quarters. The Highlanders' band came out to meet 
them : four bagpipes, two side drums, and one big 
drum. They repeat the same short strain, simple 
enough, again and again ; in Europe I should, 
perhaps, think it trivial, almost irritating, but here, 
filling me as it does with reminiscences of Brittany, 
especially after the persistent horror of tom-toms 
and shrill pipes, it strikes me as delightful — I even 
follow the soldiers to their quarters. 

Among the officers was a young lady on horse- 
back, her black habit covered with dust. Instead 
of the pith helmet that the English ladies disfigure 
themselves by wearing, she had a straw hat with 
a long cambric scarf as a pugaree. She was pretty 
and sat well, and at the last turning she pulled 
up and watched the men, the ammunition and the 
baggage all march past, saluted them with her 
switch, and cantered off to the town of " cottages." 
I saw her again in the afternoon, taking tea in 
her garden as she sat on a packing-case among 
eviscerated bales, and giving orders to a mob of 

slow, clumsy coolies, who were arranging the house. 

239 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

All round the post-office there is invariably a 
crowd of natives scribbling in pencil on post-cards 
held in their left hands. Their correspondence is 
lengthy, minute, and interminable ; in spite of their 
concentration and look of reflection I could never 
bring myself to take them seriously, or feel that 
they were fully responsible for their thoughts and 
acts — machines only, wound up by school teaching, 
some going out of order and relapsing into savages 
and brutes. 

Stones flying, sticks thrown — at a little pariah 
girl, whose shadow as she passed had defiled the 
food of a Brahmin. He merely threw away the 
rice, which the dogs soon finished; but the by- 
standers who had witnessed the girl's insolence in 
going so near the holy man — she so base and un- 
worthy — flew at the unhappy creature, who ran 
away screaming, abandoning a load of wood she 
was carrying on her head. 



240 



PESHAWUR 



PESHAWUR 

As we approached the Afghan frontier, camp 
followed camp, clustering round the railway stations 
that lie closer together on the line. In the morning 
and towards evening there was a constant hum 
round the train, of bagpipes, bugles, and drums, 
and the red or grey ranks were to be seen of 
soldiers at drill. 

Near the sepoys' tents long lines of mules 
picketed by their feet stood by the guns ; and 
further on baggage-camels, lying down, were hardly 
distinguishable from the russet grass and the 
scorched ochre sand. 

There are two towns of Peshawur: one a dis- 
tracted, silly place, with no beginning nor end, 
straggling along something in the manner of 
Madras, with an embryonic bazaar and all the 
amusements demanded by soldiers; the other en- 
closed in walls of dried mud, which are preserved 
only "to protect the town from robbers." 

In this Peshawur the houses are crowded along 
narrow, crooked alleys, and there is but one rather 
wider street of shops, which here already have a quite 
R 24X 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Persian character, having for sale only the products 
of Cabul or Bokhara. The balconies, the shutters, 
the verandahs and galleries are of wood inlaid in 
patterns like spider-net. The timbers are so slight 
that they would seem quite useless and too fragile 
to last; and yet they are amazingly strong, and 
alone remain in place, amid heaps of stones, in 
houses that have fallen into ruin. In the streets, 
the contrast is strange, of tiny houses with the 
Afghans, all over six feet high, superb men wearing 
heavy dhotis of light colours faded to white, 
still showing in the shadow of the folds a greenish- 
blue tinge of dead turquoise. Solemn and slow, 
or motionless in statuesque attitudes while they 
converse in few words, and never gesticulate, they 
are very fine, with a fierce beauty ; their large, open 
eyes are too black, and their smile quite distressingly 
white in faces where the muscles look stiff- set. 
Even the children, in pale-hued silk shirts, are 
melancholy, languid, spiritless, but very droll, too, 
in their little pointed caps covered with gold braid, 
and the finery of endless metal necklaces, and 
bangles^on their ankles and arms. 

In one of the alleys by the outer wall was a 
little house with a door in carved panels framing 

242 



PESHAWUR 

inlaid work as delicate as woven damask. A crowd 
surrounding it could not be persuaded by AbibuUa's 
eloquence to make way for me, a suspicious-looking 
stranger. 

In this house abode the postmaster of the Persian 
mails, and I wanted to register a letter for Cabul. 

Abibulla delivered a long harangue through the 
closed door; at last a wicket was opened, framing 
an eye. I was invited to approach, and then, after 
examination, the wicket in the polished door was 
abruptly closed! 

There was a sort of murmur behind the door, 
like reciting a prayer, then louder tones, indeed 
a very loud shout, repeated three times by several 
voices at once; and then the one alone continued 
in a dull chant. The door was half opened and 
I was beckoned, but to enter alone. 

On the threshold I was desired to take off my 

shoes, because I was going into the presence of a 

holy man. As I crossed the forecourt fresh and 

ferocious shouts rang out; a curtain was lifted, 

and in a room scarcely lighted by a tiny window, 

the air thick with smoke, I could just make out 

a number of men, all standing, very excited, 

gesticulating wildly, and once more they shouted 

their savage cry. 

243 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At the back of the room the master of the 
house squatted on the floor, dressed in green richly- 
embroidered with gold, and on his head was a 
vase-shaped cap or tiara of astrakhan. Near him, 
in an armchair, sat a perfectly naked fakir, his 
breast covered with jade necklaces. His face was 
of superhuman beauty, emaciated, with a look of 
suffering, his eyes glowing with rapt ecstasy. He 
seemed to be entranced, seeing nothing but a vision, 
and intoxicated by its splendour. 

Then starting to his feet, and stretching out his 
arm to point at me, he poured forth invective in 
sharp, rapid speech. The words flowed without 
pause : — 

" Dog ! traitor ! cruel wretch ! eater of meat !- " 

And then seeing that I did not go, that on 
wakening again from his dream I was still there, 
he fixed his eyes on me and caught sight of a medal 
that I wear. 

" Kali ? " he asked. 

" No ; the Virgin Mary." 

" What is the Virgin Mary ? " 

"The mother of Christ." 

"Ah, your Kali, then?" 

" No ; Kali is a cruel, bloodthirsty goddess, while 

the Virgin " 

244 



PESHAWUR 

He interrupted me : 

" She is the mother of Christ, you say ? You 
are a stranger, and you cannot know all the mischief 
they do us in the name of her Son." 

While I was talking to the postmaster the fakir 
smoked a hookah, burning amber powder and rose- 
leaves. The air was full of the narcotic fragrance ; 
a piercing perfume that mounted to the brain. 

Another fakir, a young man, had come to sit at 
the elder's feet, and when I had finished my busi- 
ness the "holy man" began to knead his disciple's 
muscles, wringing and disjointing his arms and 
dislocating his left shoulder ; and, as if in mockery 
of my distressed expression, he bent the lad's back 
inwards till his face was between his heels, and left 
him for a long minute in that torturing position. 

When at last the boy was allowed to return to 
his place in a corner he sat quite still, his eyes 
staring stupidly and shedding large tears, though 
not a muscle of his face moved. 

In the close-shut room the air, loaded with scent 
and smoke, was quite unbreathable ; musicians 
playing behind a partition added to the irritating 
effect of all this perfume and noise. 

As I was leaving, the fakir rose amid the cries of 

all the people, who clamoured for his blessing. He 

245 



EIS'CHANTED INDIA 

silenced them by a sign, then laying one hand on 
my shoulder, after looking at my medal — 

" Farewell," said he, " and may the Almighty 
protect you, for you look kind." 

The throng outside had increased; Abibulla could 
scarcely make way for me to the end of the street, 
and for a long time I could still hear the cries that 
reached us at a distance. 

Off next morning to the Khyber Pass. The road 
lay across the vast monotonous plain, richly pro- 
ductive all the way from Peshawur to the foot of 
the hills. At one end of a field some men had 
spread a net and were beating the field towards 
the corners with a heavy rope that broke down the 
tall oats ; before long the birds were seen struggling 
under the meshes, but they were soon caught and 
carried away in cages. 

Outside the fort which guards the opening of the 
pass there was confusion; a mad scurry of men, 
running, shouting, hustling. Quite a complicated 
md4e of animals bolting, elephants and camels let 
loose and impossible to overtake, but caught at last. 

After the delay, which in India is a matter of 
course, the caravan set out — the last to go ; for 
during the past three months no European had 

246 



I'ESHAWUR 

crossed the pass, and in consequence of misunder- 
standings with some of the rebel tribes to the north, 
even the natives were prohibited henceforth from 
going to Cabul. 

First went six armed regulars, then a party on 
horseback, for the most part Persians, one of whom 
was carrying in his arms an enormous sheaf of 
roses, which hid him completely and drooped over 
the saddle. 

Suddenly there was a panic among the horses; 
they shied, reared, and bolted across the fields, and 
the road being cleared, the elephants belonging to 
the Ameer of Cabul went by, to march at the head 
of the caravan. Next came a thousand camels, also 
the Ameer's ; like the elephants, they carried no 
baggage, but on the back of one female was a young 
one, tied into a basket, born only the day before, all 
white and woolly. 

Asses followed, oxen and more camels, loaded 
beyond their strength with old iron, tin pannikins, 
a whole cargo of goods in cases from Manchester 
and Sheffield — so badly packed that things came 
clattering down as the beasts pushed each other 
amid oaths and blows. 

Women porters came on foot, hidden under bales, 
nets full of crocks, faggots, and trusses of hay. 

247 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

Children, and women in sarees — fine ladies — had 
nothing to carry; some were wrapped in y ash- 
macks, shrouding them from head to foot with a 
little veil of transparent muslin over their eyes. 

And to close the procession came more soldiers. 

After inspecting my little permit to visit the 
Khyber, the officials at the fort had placed in my 
carriage a soldier of the native Khyber rifle-corps, 
six feet six in height, placid and gentle. When 
I got out of the carriage to walk up a hill he would 
follow a yard or so behind, and watching all my 
movements, looked rather as if he were taking me 
to prison than like an escort to protect me. 

We left the caravan far behind. In the gorge 
with its rosy -pink soil the silence was exquisite, the 
air had the freshness of a mountain height, and 
quite inexplicably amid these barren rocks, where 
there was not a sign of vegetation, there was a scent 
of honey and almonds. 

Children were selling whortleberries in plaited 
baskets; they came up very shyly, and as soon as 
they had sold their spoil hurried back to hide in 
their nook. Further on a little Afghan boy, standing 
alone and motionless by the roadside, held out three 
eggs for sale. 

At a turn in the road the view opened out to a 

248 



PESHAWUR 

distant horizon; the plain of Peshawur, intensely 
green in contrast with the rosy tone of the fore- 
ground ; and far away the Himalayas, faintly blue 
with glaciers of fiery gold in the sun, against a 
gloomy sky where the clouds were gathering. 

Between the cliff-walls of the defile, in a sort of 
bay, stands Ali Musjid, a little white mosque where 
travellers tarry to pray. 

Deeply graven in the stone of one of the walls is 
the giant hand of Ali the Conqueror, the terrible, 
who came from the land of the Arabs, killing all on 
his way who refused to be converted to Islam. 
And he died in the desolate Khyber, where all who 
pass do him honour, and entreat his protection on 
their way. 

Above the mausoleum a fort with battlements 
towers over the pass, "an impregnable position," 
the guides tell us. 

A company of the Khyber Eifles are quartered 
there in the old buildings and the officers' deserted 
bungalows; over all hangs an atmosphere of icy 
desolation and overpowering melancholy. Above our 
heads a flight of eagles wheeled against the sky. 

As we stood up there the caravan for Cabul came 

in sight on the road below, and slowly disappeared 

wrapped in dust, with mechanical steadiness and 

249 



ENCHAITTED INDIA 

without a sound. After that came the other train 
of travellers from Peshawur, singing to the accom- 
paniment of mule-bells, every sound swelled by the 
echo. Children's laughter came up to our ears, the 
scream of an elephant angry at being stopped — even 
at a distance we could still hear them a little — and 
then silence fell again under the flight of the eagles 
soaring in circles further and further away as they 
followed the caravan. 

Close to us on each level spot of the scarped rock 
was a little fortified look-out where three or four 
soldiers kept watch, with here and there a larger 
tower, reached only by a ladder, and in these six or 
eight men. 

Beyond this point among the mountains the road 
seemed to vanish, to lead nowhere, lost in pale red 
among the red cliffs, as if it stopped at the foot of 
the rocky wall. 

As we went back we found the roses carried in 
the morning by the Persian strewn on the ground 
in front of the Ali Musjid, and over them a flock of 
birds with red beaks were fluttering. 

Then at Peshawur again in the evening, girls, 
with groups of soldiers in red jackets or Scotch 
kilts; the common women were horrible, whitened, 

250 



PESHAWUR 

with loose shirts and tight -fitting trousers. One 
alone sat at her window wreathed about with 
mindi flowers in the crude light of a lamp. The 
others accosted the passer-bj, laughing and shouting 
in shrill tones. 

In one room we heard music — guzlas, drums, and 
a vina. There were three dancing-girls. At first 
they only performed the Indian "goose-step," the 
slow revolutions growing gradually quicker. But 
urged by the soldiers who filled the room and beat 
time with their sticks on the floor, the nautch-girls 
marked their steps, wriggled with heavy awkward 
movements, and tried to dance a Highland jig, 
taught by two Scotch soldiers. 

A dark street corner where there were no shops. 
Under a canopy constructed of four bamboos 
thatched with straw, a young man in a light- 
coloured dhoti was sitting on a low stool; about 
him were women singing. Presently one of them 
came forward, and dipping her fingers into three 
little copper pots that stood on the ground in 
front of the youth, she took first oil, then a green 
paste, and finally some perfume with which she 
touched seven spots — the lad's feet, knees, shoulders, 
and turban. Then she wiped her fingers on the 

saree of the bridegroom's mother — for he was to be 

251 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

married on the morrow — who was standing behind 
her son. 

After her another woman repeated the ceremony, 
and then they went away, still singing. This went 
on for part of the evening. When it was all over 
they went to eat rice at the bridegroom's house, and 
meanwhile the same ceremony had been performed 
with the bride, whom her neighbours had taken it 
by turns to anoint and perfume, in a house closed 
against prying eyes. 

When the dead are to be honoured in this land 
each true believer lays a pebble as homage on the 
tomb, and the dead man's repute is estimated by 
the size of the pile of stones that covers him. 

Not far from Peshawur a legend had arisen 
concerning a certain Guru, that the holy man now 
underground grew taller every year by a foot, and 
the heap of stones grew longer day by day, till the 
English authorities had to interfere and place a 
guard of soldiers to check the encroachment of the 
tumulus on the high road. 



252 



MURREE 



MURREE 

We left Rawal Pindi in a tonga. The night was 
black, the carriage had no lamps ; but now and again, 
at the sound of the driver's horn, dark masses — bag- 
gage camels, scarcely distinguishable in the gloom — 
made way for us to go past at a gallop. 

We changed horses every five miles; ill-kempt 
little beasts, and only half fed, who got through 
their stage only by the constant application of the 
whip, and shouts from the sais standing on the 
step ; when released from harness they stood forlorn 
and hobbled off, lame of every leg, to their stables 
with no litter. Day broke, a dingy grey, dark 
with woolly cloud and heavy rain ; a wall of fog 
rose up around us, while the road was uphill to- 
wards the mountains. 

The fog seemed to turn to solid smoke, im- 
penetrably black, wrapping us in darkness which 
was suddenly rent by a red flash, blood-red, ending 
in a green gleam. The mist retained a tint of 
sulphurous copper for some time; then a second 
flash, and far away among the lurid clouds we 
had a glimpse of the Himalayas, pallid purple 

with green shadows against an inky sky. The 

253 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

thunder, deadened by the masses of snow and 
very distant, rolled to and fro with a hollow sound, 
frightening the horses which struggled uphill at a 
frantic pace. And the dense fog closed round us 
once more, a dark green milkiness streaked with 
snow, which was falling in large flakes formed of 
four or five clinging together like the petals of 
flowers. Then it hailed, which completely maddened 
the horses, and then again snow, and it was literally 
night at ten in the morning when at last we reached 
this spot and the shelter of a bungalow. 

The storm raged on all day, bringing down clouds 
that swept the earth and yawned in cataracts, to the 
awful roar of the thunder that shook the foundation 
of rock. 

GARHI 

A day in the tonga. Early in the morning 

through snow, and past forests where huge pines 

were felled by yesterday's storm ; then, after 

descending a hill in a thaw that melted the clay 

soil into red mud, we came to a felted carpet of 

flowers as close as they could lie, without leaves; 

violets, and red and white tulips swaying on slender 

stems. And here again were the song of birds, 

and fragrance in the soft, clear air. 

254 



GARHI 

Halting at noon at Kohala, we found a barber in 
the open street shaving and snipping his customers. 
In a cage hanging to the bough of a tree above his 
head a partridge was hopping about — black speckled 
with white, and gold -coloured wings. It had a 
strident cry like the setting of a saw. 

As soon as the last customer's beard was trimmed, 
the barber took down the cage and carried the bird 
to another spot whence we could hear its scream. 

Above the road lie dark cliffs; a rose-coloured 
waterfall of melted snow tumbled mixing with the 
clay — pink with lilac depths, and the foam iri- 
descent in the sunbeams. The ruins of a large 
temple of green stone carved with myriads of fine 
lines stood in solitude at the edge of a wood, and 
the background was the mountain-range, the Hima- 
layas, lost in the sky and bathed in blue light. Only 
a portico remains standing — a massive, enduring 
frame for the infinite distance of snow-capped giants. 
The stones have lost their hue ; they are darkly 
streaked by the rains and a growth of grey and 
purple mosses, and russet or white lichens have 
eaten into the surface. 

All the architectural details are effaced ; para- 
sites and creepers have overgrown the old-world 



carvings. 



255 



ENCHANTED INDIA 



SRINAGAR 

Still the tonga; uphill and down, over the hilly- 
country, with a horizon of dull, low mountains, and 
the horses worse and worse, impossible to start but 
by a storm of blows. Towards evening a particularly 
vicious pair ended by overturning us into a ditch 
full of liquid mud. The sais alone was completely 
immersed, and appealed loudly to Eama with 
shrieks of terror. Abibulla on his part, after 
making sure that the sahibs and baggage were 
all safe and sound, took off his shoes, spread his 
dhoti on the ground, and made the introductory 
salaams of thanksgiving to the Prophet, while the 
coolie driver returned thanks to Eama. 

The hills are left behind us ; the plateau of Cash- 
mere spreads as far as the eye can see, traversed 
by the glistening Jellum, that slowly rolling stream, 
spreading here and there into lakes. 

Trees shut in the flat, interminable road, and it 
was midnight before we reached Srinagar, where 
I found, as a surprise, a comfortable house-boat 
with inlaid panels, and a fragrant fire of mango- 
wood smelling of orris-root. 

256 



SEINAGAR 

The large town lies along the bank of the Jellum ; 
the houses are of wood, grey and satiny with old 
age, and almost all tottering to their end on the 
strand unprotected by an embankment. The 
windows are latticed with bent wood in fanciful 
designs. Large houses built of brick have thrown 
out covered balconies and verandahs, supported on 
tall piles in the water, and on brackets carved to 
represent monsters or flowering creepers. 

The ugliest of these palaces is that of the 
Maharajah, with galleries of varnished wood, of 
which the windows overlooking the river are filled 
with gaudy stained glass. In the garden is a 
pagoda painted in crude colours crowned with a 
gilt cupola ; the zenana has bright red walls striped 
with green, and in the grounds there is a cottage 
exactly copied from a villa in the suburbs of 
London. 

The muddy waters reflected the grey houses and 
the roofs of unbaked clay, on which the winter 
snows were melting in black trickling drops. 

In the streets the people, all wrapped in long 
shawls of a neutral brown, were only distinguish- 
able amid the all-pervading greyness by their white 
head-dress. Men and women alike wear the same 
costume — a full robe of dirty woollen stuff with 
s 257 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

long hanging sleeves, and under this they are 
perfectly naked. The rich put on several such 
garments one over another ; the poor shiver under 
a cotton wrapper. And all, even the children, look 
as if they had the most extraordinary deformed 
angular stomachs, quite low down — charcoal 
warmers that they carry next their skin under 
their robe. 

At the bazaar we were positively hunted as cus- 
tomers; the clamour was harassing, and everything 
was displayed for sale in the open street, while 
the owner and his family crowded round us and 
hindered us from going a single step further. 

Inside the shops everything was piled together. 
The same man is at once a banker, a maker of 
papier-mache boxes — papi-machi they call it here 
— and of carpets, a goldsmith, tailor, upholsterer — 
and never lets you go till you have bought some- 
thing. 

The bargaining was interminable, something in 
this manner : — 

" How much for this stuff? " 

" You know it is pashmina ? " 

" Yes, I know. How much ? " 

" It is made at thirty-five, twenty, fifteen rupees." 

" Yes. But how much is this ? " 

258 



SRINAGAR 

Then follows a long discussion in Hindi with the 
bystanders, who always escort a foreigner in a mob, 
ending in the question — 

"Would you be willing to pay thirty -five ru- 
pees ? " 

"No." 

" Then twenty-eight ? " 

And the figures go down after long discussions, 
till at last the question as to whether I know 
the worth of pashmina begins all over again — 
endless. 

This morning, at Peshawur, down come the police 
on my houseboat — three of them — and their leader 
explains matters. Abibulla interprets. 

I have no right to stay in Cashmere without the 
authorization of the Anglo-Indian Government, and 
ought to have handed such a permit to the police 
on arriving. I have none — no papers whatever. 

The matter was evidently very serious. The 
three constables consulted together in an under- 
tone, and then went off after desiring that I would 
forthwith telegraph to Sealkote and bring the reply 
to the police office. 

Abibulla saw them off with great deference and 

a contrite air, and watched their retreat ; then, as 

259 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

I was about to send him to despatch the message, 
he was indignant. The police! What could they 
do to a sahib like me? It was all very well to 
frighten poor folks — it was a sin to waste money 
in asking for a reply which I should never be called 
upon to show — and so he went on, till I made up 
my mind to think no more of the matter. And 
whenever I met the chief at the bazaar or by the 
Jellum, he only asked after my health and my 
amusements. 

So, after waiting for the reply of the gentleman 
whose business it was to give me this free pass, 
seeing that he could not make up his mind, I left 
the town without it. 

At Srinagar you live under the impression that 
the scene before you is a panorama, painted to cheat 
the eye. In the foreground is the river ; beyond it 
spreads the plain, shut in by the giant mountains, 
just so far away as to harmonize as a whole, while 
over their summits, in the perpetually pure air, 
hues fleet like kisses of colour, the faintest shades 
reflected on the snow in tints going from lilac 
through every shade of blue and pale rose down to 
dead white. 

At the back of the shops, which lie lower than 
the street, we could see men trampling in vats all 

260 



SEHSJ-AGAE 

day long ; they were stamping and treading on old 
woollen shawls, fulling them to take off the shiny 
traces of wear, to sell them again as new goods. 
" Export business ! " says AbibuUa. 

On the sloping bank to the river stood a large 
wooden mosque falling into ruins. In front of this 
building was a plot full of tombstones, some over- 
thrown, some still standing on the declivity. 

In the evening, lamps shining out through latticed 
windows lighted the faithful in their pious gym- 
nastics. A mooUah's chant in the distance rose high 
overhead, and very shrill, and in the darkness the 
stars shed pale light on the tombstones mirrored in 
the black water ; a plaintive flute softly carried on 
the sound of the priests' prayers. Down the dark 
streets the folk, walking barefoot without a sound, 
and wrapped in white, looked like ghosts. 

Our boat stole slowly past the palaces, where 
there were no lights, through the haze rising from 
the river, and all things assumed a dissolving 
appearance as though they were about to vanish ; 
all was shrouded and dim with mystery. 

To-day a religious festival ; from the earliest hour 

everybody had donned new clothes, and in the after- 

261 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

noon in the bazaar there was a masquerade of the 
lowest class — embroidered dhotis, white robes, light- 
coloured turbans displaying large discs of green, red 
or blue. The men, even old men, ran after each 
other with bottles of coloured water, which they 
sprinkled far and near. One indeed had neither 
more nor less than a phial of violet ink, which, 
on the face and hands of a little black boy, shone 
with metallic lustre. One boy, in a clean garment, 
fled from a man who was a constant beggar from 
me, and who was pursuing him with some yellow 
fluid; and the fugitive was quite seriously blamed 
for disregarding the will of the gods and goddesses, 
whose festival it was. 

Two days after, the people would burn in great 
state, on an enormous wood pile, an image of Time, 
to ensure the return next year of the festival of 
colours. 

All day long in front of the houses the women 

were busy clumsily pounding grain with wooden 

pestles in a hollow made in a log; stamping much 

too hard with violent energy, they scattered much 

of the grain, which the half-tamed birds seized as 

they flew, almost under the women's hands. And 

then the wind carried away quite half the meal. 

But they pounded on all day for the birds and the 

262 



BBINAGAR 

wind, and were quite happy so long as they could 
make a noise. 

Two old women had a quarrel, and all the neigh- 
bourhood came out to look on. 

Words and more words for an hour, till one of 
them stooping down took up a handful of sand and 
flung it to the earth again at her feet. The other, 
at this crowning insult, which, being interpreted, 
conveys, " There, that is how I treat you ! like 
sand thrown down to be trodden on," covered her 
face with her sleeves and fled howling. 

Two days later the roofs were covered with tulips 
of sheeny white and red, as light as feathers swaying 
on their slender stems ; and the crowd, all in bright 
colours, went about in muslins in the clean, dry 
streets. Only a few very pious persons still wore 
the garments stained at the festival. 

In the depths of a deserted temple in the bazaar, 
amid heaps of rags, bones, and colourless dehriSy 
dwelt an old man, a very highly venerated fakir, 
motionless in his den, while around him were 
gathered all the masterless dogs of Srinagar, who 
allowed no one to come near him and flew at any- 
body who tried to enter the temple. 



263 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

At a goldsmith's I stood to watch a native making 
a silver box. He had no pattern, no design drawn 
on the surface, but he chased it with incredible 
confidence, and all his tools were shapeless iron 
pegs that looked like nails : first a circle round the 
box, and then letters and flowers outlined with 
a firm touch that bit into the metal. He had no 
bench, no shop — nothing. He sat at work on the 
threshold of his stall, would pause to chat or to 
look at something, and then, still talking, went on 
with his business, finishing it quite simply at once 
without any retouching. 

In the coppersmiths' street was a booth that 
seemed to be a school of art, where little fellows 
of seven or eight were engraving platters and pots 
with the decision of practised craftsmen. 

Some more small boys, a little way off, were doing 
embroidery, mingling gold thread and coloured silks 
in patterns on shawls. They were extremely fair, 
with long-shaped black eyes under their bright-hued 
pointed caps, and their dresses were gay and pretty, 
mingling with the glistening shades of silks and gold. 
And they were all chattering, laughing, and twitter- 
ing as they worked, hardly needing the master's 
supervision. 

A man by the roadside was mixing mud with 

264 



SEINAGAR 

chopped straw ; then when his mortar was of the 
right consistency he began to build the walls of his 
house between the four corner posts, with no tools 
but his hands. A woman and child helped him, 
patting the concrete with their hands until it began 
to look almost smooth. 

We set out from Srinagar in an ekka, drawn at 
a trot by our only horse. The driver, perched on 
the shaft almost by his steed's side, dressed in 
green with an enormous pink pugaree, flogged and 
shouted incessantly. The monotonous landscape 
went on and on between the poplars that border 
the road, extending as far as the blue circle of 
distant Himalayas. The valley was green with the 
first growth of spring ; as yet there were no flowers. 
And till evening fell, the same horizon shut us in 
with mountains that seemed to recede from us. 

We stopped at a bungalow by a creek of the 
Jellum that was paved with broad lotus - leaves, 
among which the buds were already opening their 
pink hearts. 



265 



ENCHANTED INDIA 



RAMPOOR 

By three in the morning we had started on our 
way. At the very first streak of day, in front of 
us, on the road, was a snow-leopard, a graceful 
supple beast, with a sort of overcoat above its grey 
fur spotted with black, of very long, white hairs. 
It stood motionless, watching some prey, and it was 
not till we were close that it sprang from the road 
with two bounds, and then disappeared behind a 
rock with an elastic, indolent swing. 

For our noonday rest I took shelter under a 
wood - carver's shed. On the ground was a large 
plank in which, with a clumsy chisel, he carved out 
circles, alternating with plane -leaves and palms. 
The shavings, fine as hairs, gleamed in the sun, and 
gave out a scent of violets. The man, dressed in 
white and a pink turban, with necklaces and bangles 
on his arms of bright brass, sang as he tapped with 
little blows, and seemed happy to be alive in the 
world. He gave us permission to sit in the shade 
of his stall, but scorned to converse with AbibuUa. 

A man went past in heavy, nailed shoes, wrapped 

in a flowing dhoti; he carried a long cane over his 

266 



RAMPOOR 

left shoulder, and as he went he cried, "Soli, soli, 
aia soli." All the dogs in the village crowded after 
him howling; and in the distance I saw that he 
was walking round and round two carriages without 
horses, still repeating " Soli, soli." 

Last year he and his brother had gone into the 
mausoleum of a Moslem saint with their shoes on ; 
both had gone mad. The other brother died in a 
madhouse, where he was cared for; this one, in- 
curable but harmless, went about the highways, 
followed by the dogs. 

When we left he was in a coppersmith's shop, 
singing with wide open, staring eyes ; his face 
had a strangely sad expression while he sang a 
gay, jigging tune to foolish words that made the 
people laugh. 

We met a native on horseback; a pink turban 

and a beard also pink, with a round patch of 

intensely black skin about his mouth — white hair 

dyed with henna to make it rose-colour; and a 

lock of hair that showed below his turban was a 

sort of light, dirty green in hue, like a wisp of 

hay. The rider, well mounted on his horse, was 

deeply contemptuous of us, sitting in an ekka — the 

vehicle of the vulgar; and he passed close to us 

267 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

muttering an insult in his pink beard trimmed 
and combed into a fan. 

On the river-bank were some eagles devouring 
a dead beast. One of them fluttered up, but came 
back to the carrion, recovering its balance with 
some difficulty, its body was so small for its large, 
heavy wings. Then they all rose together straight 
into the air with slow, broad wing-strokes, smaller 
and smaller, till they were motionless specks against 
the sky, and flew off to vanish amid the snowy 
peaks. 

A forest in flower: Indian almond trees white, 
other trees yellow, a kind of magnolia with delicate 
pink blossoms ; and among these hues like perfume, 
flew a cloud of birds, black, shot with glistening 
metallic green, and butterflies of polished bronze 
and dark gold flashed with blue, and others again 
sprinkled with white on the nacreous, orange-tinted 
wings. 

Whenever our green driver meets another ekka- 
driver they both get off their perch and take a 
few puffs at the hookah that hangs in a bag at 
the back of the vehicle. 

A smart affair altogether is this carriage! two 

very high wheels, no springs, a tiny cotton awning 

268 



DOMEL 

supported on four sticks lacquered red, and shelter- 
ing the seat which has three ropes by way of a 
back to it. Portmanteaus and nosebags are hung 
all round, and even a kettle swings from the near 
shaft, adding the clatter of its cymbal to the Indian 
symphony of creaking wheels, the cracking whips, 
the driver's cries of " Cello, cello" and Abibulla's 
repeated " Djaldi!^ all intended to hurry the horse's 
pace. 

DOMEL 

A great crowd round the bungalow and along 
the road, and a mass of sepoys and police, made 
Abibulla remark: 

"It must be the tax-collector to bring such a 
mob together." 

But for once he was mistaken. 

A tonga arrived just as we drove up, bringing 
an English ojfficial, travelling in his own carriage; 
gaiters, shooting jacket, a switch in his hand. He 
seated himself outside the bungalow in a cane chair, 
close by mine. Out of a case that was brought 
before him a hatchet and a pistol were unpacked, 
documentary evidence of the crime into which he 
was to inquire. 

269 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

And then, under the verandah, the accused were 
brought up : an old man and a youth, father and 
son, both superbly handsome, very tall, erect, 
haughty, in spite of the hustling of the armed 
men and the heavy chains that weighed on them; 
and after bowing low to the judge they stood 
towering above the crowd of witnesses, soldiers, 
and native functionaries, in magnificent dignity and 
calm indifference. 

Then, as it began to grow a little cool, the 
inquiry was continued indoors, whither the table 
was removed with the papers and the weapons, 
and, with great care, the magistrate's "soda." The 
two culprits were brought in and out, and in and 
out again, sometimes alone, sometimes to be con- 
fronted with the witnesses, who, almost all of them, 
had the fresh stains of the festival on their 
garments. 

One of the police in charge had a whip, and 
when he was leading away the old man, holding 
his chain he "played horses" with him, to the 
great amusement of the bystanders, and even of 
the old fellow himself. 

All round Domel there were fields of lilac lilies 

among the silky young grass, and the cliffs were 

270 



DEEWAL 

hung with a yellow eglantine exhaling a penetrating 
scent of almonds. 

There was a large encampment round the 
bungalow that night: tents for the soldiers, and 
under the vehicles men sleeping on straw; others 
gathered round the fires, over which hung the 
cooking-pots, listening to a story-teller; and in a 
small hut of mud walls, with the door hanging 
loose, were the two prisoners with no light, watched 
by three dozing soldiers. 



DERWAL 

The road lay among flowers, all -pervading; in 
the fields, on the rocks, on the road itself, pink 
flowers or lavender or white; bright moss, shrubs 
and trees in full bloom, and hovering over them 
birds of changing hue and golden butterflies. 

Towards evening came a storm of hail and snow, 
from which we took refuge in a government bunga- 
low, where none but officials have a right to rest^ — but 
we stayed there all the same. The wind was quite 
a tornado, sweeping the flowers before it, and the 
pink and yellow blossoms were mingled with the 

snowflakes and the tender green leaves, scarcely 

271 



EI^CHANTED INDIA 

unfolded. Birds were carried past, helpless and 
screaming with terror. We could hear the beasts 
in a stable close by bellowing and struggling ; and 
then, while the thunder never ceased, repeated by 
innumerable echoes, darkness fell, opaque and 
terrific, slashed by the constant flare of lightning, 
and the earth shook under the blast. 

And then night, the real night, transparently blue 
and luminous with stars, appeared above the last 
cloud that vanished with the last clap of thunder. 
Unspeakable freshness and peace reigned over 
nature, and in the limpid air the mountain-chains, 
the giant Himalayas, extended to infinity in tones 
of amethyst and sapphire. Nearer to us, lights 
sparkled out in the innumerable huts built even 
to the verge of the eternal snows, on every spot of 
arable ground or half-starved grass land. 

In the evening calm, the silence, broken only by 
the yelling of the jackals, weighed heavy on the 
spirit ; and in spite of the twinkling lights and the 
village at our feet, an oppressive sense of loneliness, 
of aloofness and death, clutched me like a night- 
mare. 



272 



KOHAT 



KOHAT 

From Kusshalgar we were travelling in a tonga 
once more. The landscape was all of steep hills 
without vegetation ; stretches of sand, hills of clay 
— ^lilac or rosy brick -earth scorched in the sun, 
green or brown earth where there had been recent 
landslips, baked by the summer heat to every shade 
of red. There was one hill higher than the rest, of 
a velvety rose-colour with very gentle undulations, 
and then a river-bed full of snowy-white sand, which 
was salt. 

And from every stone, and in the rifts in the 
rocks, hung stalactites, like glittering icicles, and 
these too were of salt. 

There was always the same torture of the horses, 
too small and too lean for their work, galloping the 
five miles of the stage and then stopping dead on 
the spot, incapable of moving, hustled by the fresh 
team that rushed off on its wild career. 

At the end of the day one of the beasts could do 

no more. A shiver ran through the limbs of the 

poor thing, which, as soon as it was released from 

the shafts, lay down, a stream of blood staining the 
T 273 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

pale sand ; and in an instant, with a deep sigh, it 
was stiff in death. 

The sun cast broad satin lights on its bay coat, 
already dry ; the light hoofs, the pretty head with 
dilated nostrils gave the creature dignity — it looked 
like a thoroughbred, really noble in its last rest; 
while the vultures and kites hovered round, waiting 
for us to be gone. 



BUNNOO 

A plain of dried mud, dull grey, with scarcely a 
tinge of yellow in places ; all round the horizon 
softly undulating hills which looked transparent, 
here a tender blue, there delicately pink, in flower- 
like hues. One of them, rising above all the 
eastern chain, might be a fortress, its towers alone 
left standing amid the general wreck. To the west 
the highest summits were lost in the blue of the 
sky, identically the same, but that the peaks were 
faintly outlined with a delicate line of snow. 

As we reached Bunnoo green cornfields extended 
as far as the eye could see, under mulberry trees 
just unfolding their leaves. Numberless channels 

of water irrigated the land ; the bed of the Kurrum 

274 



BUNNOO 

alone, quite white, was flecked here and there with 
blue pools, and was presently lost in the rosy 
distance of the hills on the Afghan frontier. 

The natives here were an even finer race than 
those at Peshawur, and more uncultured, never 
bowing w^hen we met them, but eyeing us as we 
passed as if they were meditating some foul blow. 

And in the evening at mess — a dinner given in 
honour of a regiment marching through — news was 
brought in that close to Bunnoo, in the Kurrum 
valley, two travellers had been murdered in the 
night. 

The dinner -table was covered with flowers — 
Mar^chal Mel and Gloire de Dijon roses — but 
enormous, as big as saucers, and of such a texture, 
such a colour ! a tissue of frost and light ; and 
round the table, which was loaded with silver plate, 
were grey and red uniforms. Strains of music were 
wafted in through the open windows from the 
regimental band playing slow waltz- tunes a little 
way off. 

As soon as dessert was removed two lieutenants 

got up, and seizing a couple of drums played away 

with all their might, while some other officers, 

under the pretext of dancing a Highland fling, cut 

the most amazing capers. When the band had left 

275 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

the fun went on to the sound of the banjo, lasting 
late into the cool night, all in the highest spirits. 
When I went away home to the fort, where I 

was living with my friend Lieutenant F , the 

sentinel's challenge, the tall grey walls casting 
sharp shadows on the courtyard silvered with 
moonlight, and another sentry's cry; and still, in 
contrast with the cheerful evening, I could re- 
member nothing but the tonga post-horse — a thing 
so frequent in this land of fanatics, so common that 
no one gives it more than a passing thought. 

Before daybreak, before the r4veilUe, the mooUah's 
prayer roused the Sikhs, of which two regiments 
were quartered in the fort; and till it was broad 
daylight, till the sun had chased away shadows and 
sadness, I still felt the melancholy, the twilight 
sense of uneasiness left by that slow and plaintive 
chant. 

In the afternoon the soldiers tilted on horseback, 
four on a side. They tried to unhorse each other ; 
two or three would attack one, succeeding at last 
in rolling him off under his charger, while they in 
their turn were attacked by others, ending in a 
melee, where the victors and the vanquished left 
fragments of their thin shirts. 

276 



bu:n-noo 

Then there were races of baggage - mules, and 
competitions of speed in harnessing horses and in 
striking the tents. Finally the English officers 
rode a race, and then the prizes were distributed — 
money to the men and blue pugarees with gold 
thread to the native officers. 

In the middle of the course was a stand, and 
there, with the officers and civil functionaries, were 
four English ladies who had accompanied their 
husbands to this remote station. They thought of 
their dress and took care of their babies, living 
among these Sikhs whom the native priests are 
perpetually inciting to rebellion, and seeming to 
have not the least fear of danger. 

When the road was made through Bunnoo a 
pile of stones was heaped up in the middle of the 
village. The Moslems finally persuaded themselves 
that this was a saint's grave; and they come 
hither to perform their devotions, planting round 
it bamboo flagstaffs with pennons, and adding to 
the mound the stones they piously bring to it day 
by day. 

The heat to-day has suddenly become stifling; 

the low clouds veil the colourless sun, and the 

flowers, which yesterday were still lovely, are now 

277 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

withered and pallid, and only give out their scent 
in the evening, when it is cool again. 

Two more murders; one a squalid business with 
no motive — a man killed as he was on his way to 
gather his rice-harvest. Sixteen hill-men attacked 
him at once, riddling the body with bullets. 

The other victim, the night watchman of a neigh- 
bouring village, was suspected of treachery towards 
the hill -tribes in a recent skirmish. One ball 
through the head had killed him, and his arms 
had been cut off. 

At the polo -match in the evening the band 
played, and three ladies were present; in sign of 
the spring having come, a basket was hung to the 
branch of a tree, full of straw kept constantly 
wet by the coolies, and containing sundry bottles 
of soda-water. 

Next day was kept as the spring festival. Every 
man had a rose stuck into his turban, and a shirt 
embroidered in gold on the shoulders and breast. 
The women appeared in stiff and gaudy veil cloths, 
bedizened with trumpery jewellery. Everybody 
was gay ; a little excited towards evening by arrack, 
and dancing, and singing to the eternal tom-toms. 

Even the fiercest men from the hills, with black 

278 



BUNNOO 

turbans and enormously full calico trousers that once 
were white, and shirts embroidered in bright silks, 
had set aside their ferocious looks and stuck roses 
in their pugarees, smiling at those they met. 

At mess there were two newly-arrived officers, 
come from Tochi ; they had been attacked on the 
road in the night by sixteen men. The driver and 
the horse were killed ; they themselves had not 
a scratch, and they told the story very much at 
their ease, relating the comic features of the inci- 
dent — how a bullet had lodged itself in a pot hanging 
to a mule's pack, and the frightened creature had 
kicked " like mad." 

After sunset, in every garden, on every hedge, 
wherever there had been a scrap of shade during 
the afternoon, there was a perfect burst of flowers, 
opening in the cooler air and scenting the night. 
Eound one bungalow the rose trees, overloaded with 
flowers, hardly had a leaf, and in the grass, violet 
and lavender larkspurs grew as tall as maize plants. 
Yellow stars gleamed in the tangle of creepers over 
the verandahs, and on a tree that looked as if it 
were dead blossoms glistened in the moonlight like 
polished steel. 

In the plain the sowars were performing an 

279 



EJ^CHANTED INDIA 

Indian fantasia. Charging at a gallop, their wide 
sleeves flying behind them, they swept past like 
a whirlwind, aiming with their lances at a peg of 
wood stuck into the ground. Whenever it was 
speared there were frantic shouts and applause 
from a crowd of spectators, packed in the best 
places. In a cloud of dust, growing steadily thicker 
and hanging motionless over the riders, the per- 
formance went on, its centre always this same peg 
of wood, replaced again and again, exciting the 
enthusiasm of connoisseurs till the last ray of light 
died away. 

The natives, to keep their money safe — it is 
always in coin, never in paper, which is not much 
trusted in these parts — either bury it or have it 
wrought into trinkets, worn by the women and 
children. Quite little ones of five or six, and per- 
fectly naked, have round their neck sometimes three 
or four strings of gold pieces, or pierced silver rods 
as thick as a finger — and then one evening the 
child does not come home, and in some dark corner 
the poor little body is found bleeding, the jewels 
gone. 

A Sikh, an old soldier, not long since bought 

a few acres of land; to pay for it he produced 800 

280 



BUNNOO 

rupees in silver, and on his wives, whom he brought 
with him, were 3000 rupees' worth of jewels. 

A little study of manners, as related to me by my 
neighbour at dinner : — 

A native judge is sitting cross-legged on a little 
mat in his house. A petitioner appears of the 
lowest caste, a Sudra. The judge, quite motionless, 
watches the man unfasten his sandals, rush up to 
him, and with a profound bow touch his feet in 
sign of submission. For a man of higher caste, 
a Vaysiya, the ceremonial is the same, only instead 
of running forward the visitor walks up to the 
judge and merely pretends to touch his slippers. 
Then comes a kshatriya advancing very slowly ; the 
judge rises to meet him half-way, and they both 
bow. 

In the case of a Brahmin it is the judge who 
hurries to the threshold, and affects to touch the 
priest's feet. 

Colonel C went out shooting wild duck on 

a pool close to Bunnoo with a native, whose horse, 

led by a servant, came after them. But when they 

came to the native gentleman's village he mounted, 

and returned the civility of the salaaming people, 

who till then had avoided recognizing him, regard- 

281 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

ing the fact that a kshatriya had come on foot as 
sufficient evidence that he wished to pass incognito. 
Then, when they were out of the village, the native 
gentleman dismounted and walked on with the 
colonel. 

When a Sikh is beaten and surrenders he takes 
off his turban and lays it at the conqueror's feet, to 
convey that with the turban he also offers his head. 

When a native comes to ask a favour he brings a 
few rupees in his hand, and the patron must take 
them and hold them a few minutes. A retired 
Sikh trooper had come to see his son, now a soldier 
in the regiment, and met the colonel, who asked 
him whether he could do anything for him, to 
which the other replied: 

" Can you suppose I should have insulted you by 
coming here without asking you some favour ? " 

The want of foresight in the people here is 
amazing. A servant earning five rupees a month 
got his son married, a child of fifteen, and for this 
event he bought fireworks on credit, and at 
enormous interest, which would cost him three 
years' wages. 

" How do you expect to pay ? " asked his master, 
an officer. 

282 



BUNNOO 

" I shall pay as much as I can myself, and by- 
and-by my son will earn money, and we shall pay 
between us." 

The highest peak of the chain that overlooks 
Bunnoo looks like the ruins of a fortress. A 
legend, which must have had its origin at some 
time when a man-eating tiger lurked in the neigh- 
bourhood, relates that it is the lair of a ferocious 
ogre always on the look-out for prey. Nothing on 
earth would induce any of the natives to go up the 
mountain; nay, for a long distance even the plain is 
not too safe. 

All the men carry fighting quails in little cages 
made of a net stretched over a wooden tray and 
cone-shaped at top. Towards evening, in the shade 
of the houses, at the street corners, in the court- 
yards — everywhere, there is a group betting on the 
chances of a fight. The birds taken out of the 
cages at first turn slowly round each other, their 
beaks close together. Then a spring, a flutter of 
wings and flying feathers; the quails strike and 
peck, aiming at the head, and then suddenly they 
seem quite indifferent and turn round and round 

again, picking up grain from the ground. When a 

283 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

bird is killed at the end of a battle, its eyes blinded 
and its breast torn open, it is considered a fine, a 
noble spectacle, and amateurs will talk of it for a 
long time. As a rule, after a few rounds one of the 
birds tries to get away. Then its owner pricks its 
neck with a knife, and the gasping creature dies 
slowly in the dust, the blood oozing drop by drop. 

A very good quail that is often the victor, is worth 
eight or ten rupees. At a funeral a day or two 
since one of the bearers had his quail in a cage 
hanging from his girdle — a champion bird he would 
not part from. 

A man in the fort always struck out the hours on 
a gong, very slowly, in the heat of the day. Twelve 
at noon was interminable — one, two, three were so 
feeble as to be scarcely audible. And then when it 
was cooler and the tom-toms could be heard in the 
distance, the strokes had a queer dislocated rhythm, 
and sometimes even a stroke too many, smothered 
in a hurried roll. 

The sweepers, the saises, the bearers, the whole 
tribe of noisy, idle servants — men, women, and 
children — all sleep out of doors in the hotter 
weather. And all day long the camp-bed, the two 
mats, and half a dozen pots, which constitute the 

284 



BUNNOO 

whole furniture of a family, move round the house 
with the shade, only settling down after dark. 

The moon at night shed an intense light, warm 
and golden. There was scarcely any shadow, and 
in the quivering atmosphere the flowers poured out 
their perfume on the cooler air. Frogs croaked a 
hasso continuo to cries of night birds, and a sort of 
roar, very loud but very distant, almost drowned 
the concert in the fort close by. 

White clouds grew opalescent against the deep, 
infinite, blue-velvet sky, and their edges next the 
moon were fringed with silver. The stars, of a 
luminous pale green like aqua marine, seemed dead 
and had no twinkle. 

Then, another day, the air was leaden, too heavy 
to breathe. The mountains of the gem-like hues 
had lost their glory; they were of one flat tone of 
dusky grey, and further away were lost to view, 
invisible in the dead monotony of the colourless 
sky. The silence was oppressive ; there was not a 
bird in the air, and a strange uneasiness scared the 
beasts, all seeking a shady refuge. 

Music in the evening, in the gardens which 

surround the library, the chapel, and the tennis 

285 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

courts. The ladies' dresses and the uniforms were 
lustrous in the moonlight. First we had the 
regimental band, and then songs to a banjo accom- 
paniment; and all about us in the tall trees, the 
minahs and parrots shrieking as if it were broad 
daylight, finished the concert by themselves. A 
huge creeper, swaying between two branches, hung 
like a curtain of yellow flowers embroidered, as it 
seemed, on the airy tangle of leaves. 

Gauze and muslin dresses moved gracefully about 
against the background of bamboos and roses. 
Light footsteps scarcely bent the grass ; the ripple 
of talk, with its sprinkling of Indian words, was 
sweet and musical. Fireflies whirled above the 
plants making little tendrils of light; there was 
dreaminess in the air — an anticipation of fairyland 
to which the music seemed the prelude. 

And to and fro on the ramparts, the sentry, in an 
uniform of the same hue as the sun-baked bricks, 
paced his beat, invisible but for a needle of light on 
his fixed bayonet; till when crossing a patch of 
light he w^as seen like an apparition, lost again in 
the shadow of the wall. 



286 



KOHAT 



KOHAT 

A station on the road — the delightful days at 
Bunnoo left far behind. 

The night was spent in travelling: an oppressive 
night of crushing heat, with leaden clouds on the 
very top of us; and next day, in the blazing sun- 
light, nothing seemed to have any colour — everything 
was white and hot against a blue-black sky that 
seemed low enough to rest on the earth. Way- 
farers slept under every tree, and in the villages 
every place was shut, everything seemed dead. It 
was only where we changed horses that we saw 
anyone — people who disappeared again immediately 
under shelter from the sun. 

Very early in the morning we met a many- 
coloured caravan of men, women, and children 
riding astride on asses, amid baskets and bundles. 
They were on their way to a wedding: they had 
stopped to rest for the last time; and alone, far 
from the merry, noisy group, a "bad woman" sat 
down on a stone. She was on the way to the 
same festival, and was allowed to travel with the 

287 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

caravan for succour in case of need; but she 
was not permitted to join the party. 

Towards evening the sky turned to a dull, dark 
green, and in the sudden gloom down came the 
rain in floods, tremendous, solid, for about five 
minutes; then as suddenly it was as hot as ever 
again, dry and overpowering. 

Seen through the blue glass under the low, broad 
carapace that covered the carriage, the landscape 
circled past, the colour hardly subdued to that of 
Europe ; even in the dusk, with the windows open, 
everything was still intolerably, crudely white, 
with reflections of fiery gold. Everything vibrated 
in the heat, and at the stations the walls after 
baking all day scorched you when you went near. 

About Lahore, all among the ruined temples, the 
crumbling heaps of light red bricks sparkling with 
mica, there were fields of roses in blossom and of 
ripe corn. Naked coolies were labouring in the 
fields, gathering the ears one by one into quite 
small bunches ; they looked like children playing 
at harvesting. 



288 



DEHEA BOON 



DEHRA DOON 

Amid the cool rush of a myriad streams is a 
garden, the loveliest in the world ; the broad paths 
are shaded by cedars, banyans, palms, and crotons 
with purple and orange leaves. Under the garlands 
of gorgeous flowered climbers are hedges of roses 
of every shade, and shrubs starred with lavender 
and blue. In the ditches, above the water-plants 
strewn with petals like hoar-frost, grows a carpet 
of pale lilac cineraria. 

The horizon is the Himalaya range ; the slopes 
are covered with the ribbed velvet of the tea 
plantations, and on one hill stand the scattered 
bungalows of Mussoree, looking no bigger than 
pebbles. 

My friend Captain McT , with whom I stayed, 

had a house with a peaked, reed -thatched roof. 
Eound the verandah where we slept at night hung 
festoons of jasmine and bougainvillea. Bamboos, 
phoenix, and curtains of creepers at the end of the 
lawn made a wall of verdure, fresh and cool; and 
through this were wafted the perfumes shed on 
the air — the scent of roses and verbena, of violet 
u 289 



EIv^CHAKTED INDIA 

or of rosemary, according to the side whence the 
wind blew, mingling with that of the amaryllis 
and honeysuckle in bloom close at hand, And in 
this quiet garden, far from the bazaar where the 
darboukhas were twanging,' birds sang all night, 
and the fireflies danced in mazes from flower to 
flower. 

Captain McT *s orderly appeared as soon as 

we stirred in the morning, shouldering arms — the 
"arm" an umbrella which the authorities allow as 
a privilege off duty to the Ghoorkhas, men from 
the high plateaux, who are very sensitive to sun- 
stroke, and who wear only a cap without a pugaree. 
The umbrella solemnly resting against his right 
shoulder, this worthy stood at attention, serious 
and motionless, and very upright — a quaint figure, 
his age impossible to guess, with his Mongolian 
face, his little slits of eyes, and his figure, in spite 
of his military squareness, rather too pliant in the 
yellow khaki uniform. 

"We visited a temple where the natives treasure 
the couch of the Guru Eam-Eoy, a very holy and 
much venerated fakir. 

Every year pilgrims set up the tallest tree from 
the neighbouring jungle in front of the sanctuary, 
and twist round it an enormous red flag. The 

290 



DEHRA BOON 

mast now standing was at least a hundred feet 
high, and held in place by guys attached to banyan 
trees and houses standing near. Close to the 
ground ties of coloured worsted, the offerings of 
the faithful, held the crimson hanging to the pole. 

The front of the temple is covered with paintings. 
Decorations in the Persian style divide the panels, 
on which are depicted the principal scenes from 
the sacred books of the Brahmins. There are two 
perfect things to be seen here: two nude female 
figures standing, one white, the other brown, ex- 
quisitely refined in colouring, admirably drawn in 
a style reminding me of early Italian art ; and then, 
just beyond these, tasteless imitations of chromos — 
goddesses with eyes too large and a simper like 
the advertisements of tooth-paste, and some horrible 
caricatures of English ladies in the fashion of ten 
years ago holding parasols like a nimbus. 

And certainly the most comical of all is the 
representation of a baboo donor, to whom two 
servants, prostrate before him, are offering a glass 
of water. 

To the right of the forecourt is the high priest's 
room; lustres, glass shades, gilt chairs, coloured 
photographs, incongruously surrounding an antique 
silk carpet, soiled and stained. 

291 



EJ^CHANTED IKDIA 

At the end of the court, over which enormous 
bread-fruit trees cast a cool shade, above some 
steps and a marble terrace where some musicians 
were performing, stands the holy spot which we 
dared not go near. In the dim light we could see 
a square object, red embroidered in gold — the couch 
of Eam-Eoy — and hanging to the wall a silver 
curtain. All this, though perhaps it is but tinsel, 
looked at a distance and in the shadow like brocade 
and magnificent jewels. Bound the main building 
there are four kiosks dedicated to the Guru's four 
wives. 

The guardian fakirs who watch the sacred flag sat 
under a tree in front of the temple. One of these, 
quite young, was beautiful beyond words. He had 
taken a vow always to stand. Leaning on a long 
pole he rocked himself without ceasing ; for an 
instant he allowed his rapt eyes to rest on the 
bystanders, and then looked up again at the plume 
of white horse-hair that crowns the flagstaff. His 
legs were rather wide apart and evidently stiff; he 
walked without bending his knees, and then as soon 
as he stood still he rested his chin on his long cane, 
and swayed his body as before. 

A tea plantation — a garden of large shrubs pruned 

292 



DEHRA DOON 

in such a way as to secure the greatest possible 

growth of young shoots, and above the delicate tea 

plants a shady hedge of fan palms and taller trees. 

The leaves are gathered by day, spread in the 

evening on hurdles and left for the night in open 

sheds. On the morrow they are first thrown into a 

sort of bottomless square funnel which revolves on a 

board ; rolled and broken in this machine they are 

ready for drying. The tea passes through twenty 

grades of increasing temperature, and in drying it 

gives out the most delightful aroma — a mixture of 

sweetbriar, seaweed, and violets, with a scent of tea 

too. The leaves are finally sifted, which sorts them 

in four sizes into boxes containing the different 

qualities. 

Coolies in white turbans were busy round the 

machines. They are very skilful, but work with 

determined slowness as a mute rebellion against 

the humiliating coercion of obeying a thing of 

wood and iron, and above all of obeying it without 

stopping, for the ideal of every Hindoo is to do 

nothing. And this rose to positive martyrdom 

when, in the absence of our own servants, who 

were nowhere to be found, one of these craftsmen, 

a Brahmin, strictly forbidden by his religion ever 

to touch the food of the disbelievers, or even the 

293 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

vessels they use, was obliged to make tea for us. 
Looking utterly miserable, the poor fellow weighed 
out the leaves, put them into little antique earthen- 
ware pots, and poured on the boiling water. A 
sand-glass marked how long the infusion was to 
stand. He even brought us some pretty little 
crackle basins that looked as if they had come out 
of some old-world convent pharmacy; but the poor 
man could not bring himself to pour the tea out 
—he fled. 

Close to a field that had just been reaped four 
oxen yoked abreast were threshing out the grain, 
tramping round and round on a large sheet spread 
on the ground. The driver chanted a shrill, slow 
tune; further away women in red were gleaning, 
and a patriarch contemplated his estate, enthroned 
on a cart in a halo of sunset gold. 

The Ghoorkhas, small men and very active, 
young too, with Chinese features, were practising 
gymnastics. And recruits were being drilled, two 
of them barefoot, though wearing their gaiters. 

Firmly erect in military attitudes, they moved 

like one man. All without exception turn out 

capital soldiers. 

294 



DEHRA DOON 

The drill sergeant shouts the word of command 
in wonderful English — lept, meaning left. 

This native regiment, after many victories, was 
presented by the Empress Queen with a sort of 
mace. A little shrine contains two crossed knives, 
and is surmounted by three Ghoorkhas bearing a 
royal crown in silver. This object is preserved in 
a case in the ammunition store. An officer is 
appointed to guard it, and the soldier who took it 
out to show me touched it really as if it had been 
the Host. And it is a fact that on high festivals 
the soldiers come to sacrifice goats before the house 
where this fetish is treasured. 

After dinner, with the dessert, the head orderly of 
the mess marched in with the decanters. He set 
them on the table, and then stood immovable at his 
post behind the colonel's chair, shouldering his gun 
till everybody had done, when he carried off the 
bottles with the same air of being on parade. 

Outside, under a thatched screen, sits the punkah 

coolie, his legs crossed, the string in his hand ; and 

as soon as everyone goes into the room he wakes up, 

rocks his body to and fro, his arm out in a fixed 

position, swaying all of a piece with a mechanical 

see-saw, utterly stupid. He will go to sleep lulled 

by his own rocking, and never wake unless the cord 

breaks, or somebody stops him. 

295 



ENCHANTED INDIA 



HARDWAR 

At the bottom of a wide flight of steps flows the 
Ganges, translucent, deeply green, spangled with 
gold. The bathers, holding the little brass pots 
that they use for their ablutions, are performing 
the rites, surrounded by large yellow fishes spotted 
with green. Pink and white stuffs are spread to 
dry on the steps, flowers are scattered on the stream, 
long wreaths are floating down the river, curling 
and uncurling at the caprice of the current. 

After bathing, during their long prayers to the 

gods of the river, almost as sacred here as it is at 

Benares, the pilgrims threw grain to the half-tame 

fish. Steering vigorously with their tails, the 

creatures turned and rolled, making eddies of light 

in the water, and hurrying up to the falling grain 

occasionally upset the equilibrium of some old 

woman still taking her bath. At the top of the 

bank, in the blazing sunshine, two fakirs, squatting 

in the dusty road, remained unmoved by all this 

tunnoil, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed 

in a fixed thought which concentrated their gaze 

296 



HARDWAR 

on an invisible point. The fall of an old woman 
into the Ganges, with all the shouting that such an 
incident entails in India, left them quite indifferent; 
they did not stir, did not even glance at the river 
as the woman was taken out unconscious. 

There are temples all along the shore, poor little 
structures for the most part. On the walls gaudy- 
borders of crude colour serve to frame chromo- 
lithographs representing the principal events of the 
Vedas. There are but one or two sanctuaries built 
of marble, and very rarely have the idols any 
precious jewels. 

Beyond the temples is the merchants' quarter : a 
few very modest shops, the goods covered with dust; 
and in the middle of this bazaar, a cord stretched 
across cut off a part of the town where cholera was 
raging. 

In the plain, beyond shady avenues of tamarind 
and terminalia trees, Hardwar begins again, a 
second town of large buildings, buried in the 
greenery of banyans and bamboos. Here again 
was the ghost of a bazaar, where all seemed dead 
under the bleaching sun — a bazaar bereft of sellers, 
no one in the booths, and no buyers in the deserted 
streets. 

At every street-corner there were blocks of salt, 

297 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

which the cows and goats licked as they went 
past. 

On our way back through the temple-quarter a 
sudden wild excitement possessed the worshippers 
and priests; out of a side street rushed a large 
troop of monkeys, grey, with black faces. They 
galloped past in a close pack and fled to the trees, 
shrieking shrilly. One, however, lagged behind, 
bent on stealing some rice that had been brought 
as an offering to a plaster image of Vishnu. A 
Brahmin stood watching the monkey, and tried to 
scare it away with a display of threatening arms, 
but he dared not hit the beast sacred to Hanuman, 
the god of the green face. The creature, never 
stirring from the spot, yelled aloud, bringing the 
rest of the pack back on to the roof of the neigh- 
bouring pagodas. Then the ringleader, with a 
subdued, sleepy, innocent gait, stole gently up to 
the tray of offerings. He was on the point of 
reaching it when the priest raised his arm. This 
was a signal for the whole tribe to scream and 
dance with terror, but without retreating. The 
performance seemed likely to last ; the bazaar and 
the temples were in a hubbub of excitement; the 
doors of the shops and the sanctuaries were hastily 

shut, till, at the mere sight of a man who came out 

298 



DELHI 



with a long bamboo in his hand, the whole pack 
made off and appeared no more, and Hardwar 
relapsed into its somnolent sanctity. 



DELHI 

In the train to Delhi the windows were screened 
with cuscus mats constantly sprinkled with water, 
and so long as the train was in motion the air came 
in cool, fragrant, and breathable. But whenever we 
stopped in the desert which this country becomes 
just before the monsoon, melted lead seemed to 
scorch up the atmosphere and shut the train in 
between walls of fire. 

Delhi appeared in the blinding light like an un- 
substantial vision, white against a bleached sky; 
and as we got nearer the city half vanished like a 
mirage, blotted out and dim through a shifting 
cloud of dust. 

Every house in the town was shuttered, not a 

soul was to be seen in the baked streets; only 

here and there in a shady corner a beggar might be 

seen asleep. A chigram only was slowly moving 

along at the slow pace of two draught oxen, carrying 

the women of a zenana, and their constant chatter 

299 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

within the curtains of the clumsy vehicle sounded 
formidably loud and discordant in the silence, the 
death-like exhaustion of noon. A foxy smell came 
up from everything that the sun was baking, and 
towards the end of the day it had become intoler- 
able, corpse -like. It died away, however, after 
sunset. 

Then, in the magic of the evening, the air was 
saturated with fragrance; invisible gardenias, 
amaryllis, and lemon -flowers perfumed the cool 
night. On every side we could hear the quavering 
guzla, the sound of tom-toms and tambourines. 
The streets were brightly lighted up and crowded. 

A dancing-girl went by, wrapped in white muslin 
as thin as air, hardly veiling the exquisite grace of 
her shape. Close to us, in front of two musicians 
playing on the vina and the tom-tom, she began to 
dance, jingling the rattles and bells on her anklets : 
a mysterious dance with slow movements and long 
bows alternating with sudden leaps, her hands 
crossed on her heart, in a lightning flash of silver 
necklets and bangles. Every now and then a 
shadow passed between the nautch-girl and the 
lights that fell on her while she was dancing, and 
then she could scarcely be seen to touch the 
ground, she seemed to float in her fluttering 

300 



DELHI 

drapery; and presently, before the musicians had 
ceased playing, she vanished in the gloom of a side 
alley. She had asked for nothing, had danced 
simply for the pleasure of displaying her grace. 

On our way back to the hotel, in a park through 
which we had to pass, we suddenly heard overhead 
a shrill outcry proceeding from a banyan tree to 
which a number of vampires had hung themselves 
up. Clinging together side by side, like black rags, 
and hardly visible in the thick foliage, the creatures 
formed a sort of living bunch, creeping, swaying, 
and all uttering the same harsh, monotonous, in- 
cessant cry. 

As we passed the sacred tanks, where a smell of 

decay filled the air that still rang with the cries of 

the bats, our horses suddenly shied and refused to 

go forward, terror-stricken by some invisible danger 

suggested to them by that reiterated shriek or the 

corpse-like smell. A very long minute passed as 

we sat in the carriage, a minute of dread that left 

us quite excited by this mysterious peril of which 

we had somehow felt the awe. Nor was it till we 

had left the great trees by the tanks behind us that 

the impression wore off under the comforting light 

of the stars. 

With day came the grip of fire, the overwhelming 

301 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

mastery of the heat. The sunshine pierced through 
every crack in the shutters and blinds, intolerably 
vivid. In feverish exhaustion, helpless to with- 
stand the glow and light, we could but lie under 
the waving punkah and await the blessed return 
of night. 

BOMBAY 

A tea-party in the afternoon at the yacht club. 
The ladies in smart dresses, the talk all of fashion- 
able gossip — how far away from all I had been 
seeing. An European atmosphere, where a touch 
of local colour was only suggested by the native 
servants. The plague, the ruling terror when I was 
last in Bombay, was forgotten; the only subject 
now was the Jubilee, and the latest news from 
England arrived by that day's mail. 

In the evening, on my way to dine with a friend 
by Malabar Hill, I could hardly recognize some 
parts of the town : houses, a camp of little huts 
and tents, a whole district had been swept away. 
A wide open space covered with rubbish heaps was 
to be seen w^here the sepoys' barracks had been, and 
where from the first the men had died of the plague 
by hundreds. In one garden, a bungalow where a 

302 



BOMBAY 

man had just died was being burnt down — still 
burning. A party of police were encouraging the 
fire, and a cordon of native soldiers kept everybody 
else off. 

A heavy, rusty-red cloud hung over the field of 
Hindoo funeral fires. Tambourines and bells could 
be heard in the distance, and as we went nearer 
the noise grew louder in the foul air, stifling and 
stagnant; till when we got close to the place the 
noise and singing were frantic and the smell of 
burning was acrid, sickening. 

But at Byculla, in Grant Eoad, the street of 
gambling-houses, there was a glare of lights ; gaudy 
lanterns were displayed at the windows where 
spangles and tinsel trinkets glittered. And then, 
between two brightly illuminated houses where 
every window was wide open, there was the dark 
gap of a closed house, in front of it a pan of 
sulphur burning. The green and purple flame 
flickered grimly on the faces of the passers-by, 
making their dhotis look like shrouds wrapping 
spectres. 

In the side streets the natives lay sleeping on 
the bare earth in the coolness of night. On every 
house were the spots of red paint that told how 
many of the inhabitants had died of the plague ; 

303 



ENCHANTED INDIA 

and the smaller the house the closer were the dabs 
of paint, almost framing the door with a chain of 
red spots. 

A funeral came pushing past me in the silence of 
this sleeping district: the body, wrapped in red, 
hung from a bamboo that rested on the bearers' 
shoulders. No one followed him, and the group 
disappeared at once in the deep gloom of the narrow 
alley. 

I turned back into Grant Eoad, where bands of 
tom-toms and harmoniums were hard at it, where 
the gamblers were stifling each other round the 
roulette-boards in a frenzy of amusement and high 
spirits, eager for enjoyment before hovering death 
should swoop down on them. 

In a quiet, darkened corner a girl was lying on a 
bier, a girl of the Brahmin caste, all in white, veiled 
by a transparent saree. By her side an old man, a 
bearded patriarch, seemed to wait for someone. 
Then another Brahmin came out from a little 
house, carrying the fire wherewith to light the 
funeral pile in a little pot hanging from his girdle. 
The two old men took up their burthen — so light 
that even to them, tottering already towards their 
end, it seemed to be no weight. They made their 
way" cautiously, so as not to tread on the sleep- 

304 



AT SEA 

ing figures strewn about the street, going very 
slowly in devious zigzags. A dog woke and howled 
at them; and then, as silence fell, I could hear again 
the dying sounds of harmoniums and tom-toms, and 
the clatter of the games. 



AT SEA 

Bombay, towering above the sea in a golden glory 
— the tall towers and minarets standing out in sharp 
outline against the sky, splendid in colour and glow. 
Far away Malabar Hill and a white speck — the 
Towers of Silence; Elephanta, like a transparent 
gem, reflected in the aqua-marine-coloured water. 

A rosy light flooded the whole scene with fiery 
radiance, and then suddenly, with no twilight, dark- 
ness blotted out the shape of things, drowning all in 
purple haze ; and there, where India had vanished, 
a white mist rose from the ocean that mirrored the 
stars. 



THE END. 



X 305 



PLYMOUTH : 

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, 

PKINTBRS. 



